MagCat: an agent-based metadata service for data grids

Facing the increasing demand for data sharing in distributed environments, computer grids became an attractive technology to manage extended data sets, providing efficient access, publishing, and data discovery. In this paper, we present the structure and implementation of MagCat multi-agent system, that provides a service for publishing and discovery data in grids through metadata. This service is being developed in context of MAG, a grid middleware that explores the mobile agent paradigm as a way to overcome the design and implementation challenges of constructing a grid middleware.