The use of proprietary grid protocols has long been a barrier to entry for end users, as access to data on the grid from the user's desktop requires specialized grid tools to be installed. The latest release of dCache addresses this problem by supporting the WebDAV protocol, providing easy to use access out of the box from all major operating systems.

WebDAV is a standardised extension of the HTTP protocol allowing common file operations like file browsing, upload and download, and name space operations like renaming, moving, copying and deleting files. This provides easy to use drag and drop access to the grid in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, indistinguishable from other network drives. Web browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari may also be used for read-only access to explore and download data from the grid.

A secure variant of WebDAV extends HTTPS to provide authenticated, confidential and integral data access. dCache fully supports the use of X509 client certificates for authentication. Existing X509 compliant host and user grid certificates are leveraged to authenticate both servers and clients.

Unfortunately not all operating systems support X509 client certificates out of the box. To address this issue a future version of dCache will support password based HTTP basic authentication. This can be used over both unencrypted HTTP and encrypted HTTPS. Support for HTTPS basic authentication also opens up new opportunities to use dCache in non WLCG communities, where the use of X509 personal certificates is less common.

Future versions of dCache will also address the use of RFC proxy certificates and VOMS attributes, thus providing full integration to the WLCG identity infrastructure. Those technologies are not yet available out of the box in todays operating systems, thus limiting their usefulness.