Databases and the Grid: JDBC in WSDL, or Something Altogether Different?

The Grid is rising to prominence both as a vision and as an infrastructure. The vision is of dynamically formed virtual organisations that collaborate to address shared goals. The infrastructure, although still a work in progress, is a middleware that facilitates the sharing of networked resources on a global scale. Databases are important resources that are central to many organisations, and as such must be able to be accessed, integrated and managed in a Grid environment. How should this be done? What problems must be overcome when working in a Grid environment? What new expectations, opportunities and patterns of use come to the fore? This presentation both discusses core grid data access services and the wider implications and opportunities of Grids for database technologies.