This document describes the requirements for construction and operation of grid systems. This document does not say “Grid Systems must satisfy these requirements�. It says “These requirements shall be considered when someone designs / constructs / operates on Grid Systems�

On February 28, 2008, as part of OGF22, the Open Grid Forum held Data Movement and Management Workshop. During the day-long meeting, speakers from research and industry described challenges in data movement and management and detailed some possible solutions. The goal was to look for common issues and points for collaboration among the OGF working group and with the Storage Networking Industry Association. The common theme that emerged was the challenge of metadata management. Both research centers and commercial enterprises are flooded with data and are struggling to provide useful access.

This document defines the types of OGF documents and the development and review processes for each type. This document obsoletes GFD.1 and replaces it as the description of OGF community practice surrounding the document series. The process reflects several years of experience with OGF document publication, and borrows heavily from the Internet Engineering Task Force Request for Comments document process.

This document is a call to action, identifying issues and proposing a strategy in order to support and make progress in grid and e-Science education and training. Inevitably, it is neither complete nor definitive. The intention is that it will seed much greater efforts to further develop the understanding of requirements, to better characterise challenges and to propose specific strategies, curricula and collaborative efforts for international adoption. The ET-CG is already fostering other more specific work and documents that form elements of that development.