Abstract:
The Blue Brain Project is aimed at achieving a biologically accurate simulation of the
cortical column. It is collaboration between Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne
and IBM and is a prominent example of a neuroscience project that extensively draws on
computer science. A large amount of data related to electrophysiology, morphology and
genetic properties of neocortical neurons is already present in project’s data bank. In future
more data is expected to be acquired from several places around the world. The data is in the
form of files and metadata is associated with the files. The Blue Brain Project (BBP) Database
uses Storage Resource Broker (SRB), a distributed file system integrated with a relational
database, as its data repository. SRB provides efficient storage of the large number of files as
well as powerful and fast querying performance. Software tools have already been developed
for data storage, manipulation and analysis. In order to integrate these tools, a software
development framework has been proposed and developed, based on component based
software engineering.
A cross-lab data access and integration system has been provided by using the state of
the art EMCAT and Zone Federation concepts of SRB. Furthermore, a keyword based
searching system has been built on top of the cross-lab data accessing system. This searching
system has been empowered with an ontology support. The proposed system is generic and
can have applications beyond the BBP.
