The first release of the Open Grid Services Architecture - Distributed Query Processor (OGSA-DQP) based on the OGSI and OGSA-DAI standards is now available. It extends the OGSA-DAI architecture with two new services - the Grid Distributed Query Service (GDQS) and the Grid Query Evaluation Service (GQES). The OGSA-DQP:

• Supports queries over databases that are wrapped by OGSA-DAI Grid Data Services and over other services available on the Grid, thereby combining data access with analysis
• Uses the OGSA facilities to dynamically obtain the resources necessary for efficient evaluation of a distributed query
• Adapts techniques from parallel databases to provide implicit parallelism for complex data-intensive requests so that parts of the query can be executed in parallel on different hosts for efficiency
• Uses the emerging standard for GDSs to provide consistent access to database metadata and to interact with databases on the Grid