Grid Data Management Systems & Services

Abstract

This chapter introduces the Grid, and examines the requirements, issues, and possible solutions for integrating data into the Grid. The Grid is an emerging infrastructure for providing coordinated and consistent access to distributed, heterogeneous computational and information storage resources amongst autonomous organizations. Data grids are being built across the world as the next generation data handling systems for sharing access to data and storage systems within multiple administrative domains. A data grid provides logical name spaces for digital entities and storage resources to create global identifiers that are location independent. Data grid systems provide services on the logical name space for the manipulation, management, and organization of digital entities. Databases are increasingly being used within Grid applications for data and metadata management, and several groups are now developing services for the access and integration of structured data on the Grid.