Speaker
Description
Synchrotron facilities such DESY’s PETRA III with its multitude of techniques at the beamlines serve as essential hubs for cutting-edge photon science research in collaboration with universities. However, the sheer volume of experimental data generated often surpasses local storage and computational resources, making traditional wide-area network transfers increasingly inefficient.
The PHOTONIC project is a joint initiative between DESY and its academic partners and addresses these challenges by developing a customized data-access framework designed to meet researchers’ evolving needs during and after beamtimes. Key objectives include accelerating the incorporation of data into analytical pipelines and simplifying overall accessibility through features like real-time visualization and streaming capabilities.
At its core, the system under evaluation integrates seamlessly with DESY’s storage infrastructure, supporting multiple data formats, enabling interoperability via transcoding, and allowing selective retrieval of datasets through API-driven access. By delivering only the most relevant portions of data, this approach minimizes bandwidth usage, reduces storage overhead, and enhances the efficiency of downstream analyses—while simultaneously fostering greater sustainability through targeted data handling.
Led by DESY (IT & Photon Science Division) in partnership with universities, the three-year project is supported by funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which finances four dedicated roles. These positions focus on backend development, client-side implementation, as well as outreach activities encompassing training, dissemination, and community engagement.
This presentation will introduce the existing data-access possibilities the new service provides alongside possible constraints, followed by a structured overview of PHOTONIC’s aims, methodological strategies, architectural design, and current milestones, concluding with a short glimpse into first features.