CasJobs

Summary

CasJobs is a major component of the SciServer infrastructure and provides a sophisticated query management and scheduling subsystem that supports the many ways in which researchers access relational database data. CasJobs supports a web services API that is generalizable and accessible from any application, and is used by other SciServer components (such as Compute).

Query Capabilities

CASJobs allow SQL queries to be written and executed against relational databases. These databases may be public datasets or private datasets, and CASJobs also allows queries to be executed efficiently across database instances. There are two modes of querying – first, there is “quick query” which executes a synchronous query while the user waits and displays the results on the screen; second, there is asynchronous “batch” mode execution whereby a query can be submitted to a queue and executed in the background, with results being output to either a database or a file system.

User Space

CasJobs provides a storage capability called “MyDB” – every user that signs up gets their own relational database storage space to support their queries and results.  The MyDB capability was a huge success in the astronomy community, and continues to be a central capability now that SciServer supports a wide range of science domains.

In addition to MyDB, CasJobs also supports “MyScratch” which is a large amount of shared relational database storage to support the results of intermediate queries that may be too large to store in the users allocated MyDB. This is temporary and volatile storage that is not preserved or backed up, but lasts long enough to process results or share them with collaborators.

Integration

CasJobs works seamlessly with other SciServer components to enhance your research and teaching. CasJobs integrates with the Login Portal, SkyServer, SkyQuery, SciDrive, Dashboard, and Compute.

Back to Tools page