Data Management for Grid Environments

An overview of research and development challenges for managing data in Grid environments is provided. We relate issues in data management at various levels of abstraction, from resources storing data sets, to metadata required to manage access to such data sets. A common set of services is defined as a possible way to manage the diverse set of data resources that could be part of a Grid environment. The resource heterogeneity is handled by an API, that defines services that need to be provided, rather than details of how such services are implemented.