Distributed access system for uniform and scalable data and service access

Computational modeling systems (CMS) are designed to resolve many of the shortcomings associated with systems currently employed in providing support for a wide range of scientific modeling applications. We identify the requirements of a "reasonable" CMS and identify the requirements of Amazonia, a CMS intended to support modeling in large-scale earth science research. Amazonia has been implemented as an open and layered architecture. In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of the distributed access system, a key component of the Amazonia Kernel that supports the organization of and access to data and services in a distributed environment.