DSI User Guide

The goal of the Data Science Infrastructure Project (DSI) is to provide a flexible, AI-ready metadata query capability which returns data subject to strict, POSIX-enforced file security. The data lifecycle for AI/ML requires seamless transitions from data-intensive/AI/ML research activity to long-term archiving and shared data repositories. DSI enables flexible, data-intensive scientific workflows that meet researcher needs.

DSI is implemented in three parts:

• Readers and Writers

• Backends

• Core middleware

For more information on these DSI modules, please refer to the DSI Introduction Page.

Users can interact with DSI seamlessly through two methods:

• Python API for more flexibility when loading/exporting data

• Command Line Interface API for streamlined DSI functionality without requiring any knowledge of Python

DSI Base Requirements

• python3 (3.11 tested)

• Cross-platform (Unix / macOS / Windows)

• Git

• Plugins and Backends introduce further requirements

Installation

DSI has several versioned releases and cloning from ‘main’ is the alpha-version.

Users that want to install DSI should follow our installation steps.

Release Versions

Supported release versions of DSI are tagged and found in (https://github.com/lanl/dsi/releases). Releases with minimal requirements are published on pip via (https://pypi.org/project/dsi-workflow/). To install the latest version, try the following:

python3 -m pip install dsi-workflow

Contributor Resources

DSI Contributors can view our more developer-focused documentation in the Contributor Resources.

These pages further explain DSI Readers/Writers/Backends, as well as how to write your own Reader/Writer compatible with DSI. Project contributors are encouraged to prototype solutions which do not contain sensitive data at this time.

Copyright and License

This program is open source under the BSD-3 License.

© 2025. Triad National Security, LLC. All rights reserved. LA-UR-25-29245

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1.Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2.Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3.Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.