Replica Selection Replica Management Generic Grid Services Data Grid Specific Services Core Services

In an increasing number of scientiic disciplines, large data collections are emerging as important community resources. In this paper, we introduce design principles for a data management architecture called the Data Grid. We describe two basic services that we believe are fundamental to the design of a data grid, namely, storage systems and metadata management. Next, we explain how these services can be used to develop higher-level services for replica management and replica selection. We conclude by describing our initial implementation of data grid functionality.