Abstract
Grid systems enable the sharing of a large number of geographically-dispersed resources among different communities of users. They require a mapping functionality for the association of users requests expressed in terms of requirements and preferences to actual resources. This functionality should deal with a potentially high number of similar resources and with the diversity of the perceived satisfactions of users. We propose XMatch, a query language enabling the expression of the user request in terms of the expected satisfaction over XML-based representation of available resources. This language offers a compact way for users to express their preferences for Grid resources and enable the maximization of the global preference.