Anatole Beck

Data Logistics is the management of the physical resources which underlie the storage, movement and processing of data. The term applies to some techniques (e.g. caching, replication) that have been used for decades and in some cases predate electronic data processing as well as to current research efforts (e.g. cloud architecture, data intensive computing).

Computer systems architecture often offers a choice of strategies for the implementation of a given function, resulting in a tradeoff in the use of different resources. The most familiar example is caching: two memories are available to store some collection of data items, with different physical characteristics. Typically, one memory is larger and has a slower time for access by some user. A caching strategy will then populate the two memories according to the user's historical and predicted sequence of reads and writes, according to some cache management policy. The choice of policy controls the use of available physical resources to improve the performance of user access.

Examples

Data Logistics come into play wherever resource trade-offs can be applied to implement higher-level services with different cost, performance and other characteristics. Other familiar examples of such trade-offs include:

1. Data compression trades off data transmission or storage resources against increased use of processing resources.
2. Data replication can be used to increase the robustness of data storage at the cost of increased storage utilization and increased worst case data access time.
3. Multimedia PCs and Personal Video Recorders apply greatly increased bandwidth and storage to the problem of content delivery in order to increase and provide greater control over the selection of programs available the the end user on demand.

Less well known are applications of Data Logistics that enable many large-scale and high-performance data management efforts:

1. Content distribution.
2. In-situ data analysis.
3. Email-on-a-bus in india.

Advanced Deployment and Research Efforts Employing Data Logistics

• The Global HTTP Caching Infrastructure
• I2-DSI
• Logistical Networking
• The Logistical Session Layer
• Data Grids & Clouds
• CoMon