Doing One Thing Well: Leveraging Microservices for NASA Earth Science Discovery and Access Across Heterogenous Data Sources

The NASA EOSDIS (Earth Observing System Data and Information System) Common Metadata Repository (CMR) is a continuously evolving metadata system that merges all existing capabilities and metadata from EOS ClearingHOuse (ECHO) and the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) systems. This flagship catalog has been developed with several key requirements:

fast search and ingest performance

ability to integrate heterogenous external inputs and outputs

high availability and resiliency

scalability

evolvability and expandability

This talk will focus on the advantages and potential challenges of tackling these requirements using a microservices architecture, which decomposes system functionality into smaller, loosely-coupled, individually-scalable elements that communicate via well-defined APIs. In addition, time will be spent examining specific elements of the CMR architecture and identifying opportunities for future integrations.