The SAMGrid database server component: its upgraded infrastructure and future development path

The SAMGrid Database Server encapsulates several important services, such as accessing file metadata and replica catalog, keeping track of the processing information, as well as providing the runtime support for SAMGrid station services. Recent deployment of the SAMGrid system for CDF has resulted in unification of the database schema used by CDF and D0, and the complexity of changes required for the unified metadata catalog has warranted a complete redesign of the DB Server. We describe here the architecture and features of the new server. In particular, we discuss the new CORBA infrastructure that utilizes python wrapper classes around IDL structs and exceptions. Such infrastructure allows us to use the same code on both server and client sides, which in turn results in significantly improved code maintainability and easier development. We also discuss future integration of the new server with an SBIR II project which is directed toward allowing the DB Server to access distributed databases, implemented in different DB systems and possibly using different schema.