  PHENIX is one of the two large experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion
Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and archives roughly
100TB of experimental data per year. In addition, large volumes of simulated
data are produced at multiple off-site computing centers. For any file catalog
to play a central role in data management it has to face problems associated
with the need for distributed access and updates. To be used effectively by the
hundreds of PHENIX collaborators in 12 countries the catalog must satisfy the
following requirements: 1) contain up-to-date data, 2) provide fast and
reliable access to the data, 3) have write permissions for the sites that store
portions of data. We present an analysis of several available Relational
Database Management Systems (RDBMS) to support a catalog meeting the above
requirements and discuss the PHENIX experience with building and using the
distributed file catalog.
