ICS Architecture

The ICS (Integrated Core Services) provides the "core" or central hub of the EPOS e-infrastructure ensuring interoperability between the data and services provided by the TCSs and the National Research Infrastructures (NRIs). The ICS system architecture has been designed to provide the tools to facilitate the discovery of data, data products, software and services (DDSS) and the integration of these resources to fulfil users requests across the EPOS community.

The system architecture of the ICS is composed of several modular components which are depicted in the figure below (include diagram) and described below:

  • Ingestor

This component takes care of inserting metdata information file into the metadata catalog (CERIF database).

  • Workspace Connector

It is used to store information about user workspaces.

  • Workspace Catalogue (MongoDB)

The workspace catalogue takes care of storing all the information concerning workspace, workspace item and workspace configurations. Implemented using MongoDB.

  • Metadata Catalogue

Stores metadata about the various DDSS elements provided by the Thematic Core Services (TCS’s) which has been harmonised to a common standard known as CERIF (Common European Research Infrastructure Format) to facilitate efficient searching.

  • TCS Connector

Allows TCS API’s developed for converting DDSS elements to a TCS specific metadata standard to be connected into the ICS, for example by providing wrappers to extract and store this metadata in the Metadata Catalogue.

  • Query Generator

This component creates an SQL query from the parameters provided by the Web API and passes this to the Metadata Catalogue so that the relevant data can be retrieved via the database connector.

  • Mapper

Software to perform mapping functions between the highly normalised CERIF data model and other metadata schemas such as TCS specific metadata formats, and the “EPOS metadata baseline” consisting of a minimum set of the most commonly used metadata elements.

  • Message Queue/Bus

Provides a system management function by orchestrating  the interaction between the other modules in order to satisfy user requests.

  • Workflow Manager

Execute specific workflows for example to process data using specific software using appropriate workflow engines.


This component performs the connection between the graphical user interface (GUI) and other system components. For example by formatting the query parameters input to the GUI by the user and directing these to the Query Generator.

  • AAAI (Authentication, Authorisation, Accounting, Infrastructure)

This module will manage and interoperate with all the major AAAI services such as SAML, OAuth, OpenID, X.509, and related products such as Shibboleth and EduGAIN.

  • GUI (Graphical User Interface)

Providing the interface to the user and allowing them to firstly query the DDSS elements of interest, and then specify appropriate workflows to process the data.

Each component is described in detail in  the EPOS TCS-ICS Integration guidelines Level 2.