Knowledge-based services for next-generation grids

To be effectively adopted in different application domains, next-generation grids need to face some emerging issues in scientific and commercial applications and in the way they use grids: an overwhelming availability of data, an increasing complexity and distribution of applications, an increasing heterogeneity of grid users and applications. Moreover, the amount of grid usage data increases whenever new functions are added to the grid middleware. To face such issues next-generation grids need to adopt knowledge based functionalities, for both applications support and system management. The paper introduces requirements of next-generation grids and describes some emerging services and simple cases study showing how such services could be employed.