Data management, knowledge discovery, and knowledge processing are core and hot topics in computer science. They are widely accepted as enabling technologies for modern enterprises, enhancing their performance and their decision making processes. Since the 1990s the Internet has been the outstanding driving force for application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing (e. g. , computing resources, s- vices, metadata, data sources) across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolvement of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications prov- ing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource characterized by: heterogeneity of nodes, data, and knowledge autonomy of data and knowledge sources and services large-scale data volumes, high numbers of data sources, users, computing resources dynamicity of nodes These characteristics recognize: (i) limitations of methods and techniques developed for centralized systems (ii) requirements to extend or design new approaches and methods enhancing efficiency, dynamicity, and scalability (iii) development of large scale, experimental platforms and relevant benchmarks to evaluate and validate scaling Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and agent systems supporting with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between Grids, P2P systems and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments.
