  The AliEn (ALICE Environment) file catalogue is a global unique namespace
providing mapping between a UNIX-like logical name structure and the
corresponding physical files distributed over 80 storage elements worldwide.
Powerful search tools and hierarchical metadata information are integral parts
of the system and are used by the Grid jobs as well as local users to store and
access all files on the Grid storage elements. The catalogue has been in
production since 2005 and over the past 11 years has grown to more than 2
billion logical file names. The backend is a set of distributed relational
databases, ensuring smooth growth and fast access. Due to the anticipated fast
future growth, we are looking for ways to enhance the performance and
scalability by simplifying the catalogue schema while keeping the functionality
intact. We investigated different backend solutions, such as distributed key
value stores, as replacement for the relational database. This contribution
covers the architectural changes in the system, together with the technology
evaluation, benchmark results and conclusions.
