Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for a grid computing system that performs analytical calculations on data stored in a distributed file system. A grid-enabled software component at a control node is configured to invoke the distributed file system software at the control node to provide block locations for a plurality of the data blocks; determine a configuration of data blocks to read at the plurality of worker nodes; instruct the grid-enabled software components at the plurality of worker nodes to retrieve locally stored data, perform an analytical calculation on the retrieved data, and send the results of the analytical calculation on the retrieved data to the grid-enabled software component at the control node; and assemble the results of the analytical calculations performed by the grid-enabled software components from the plurality of worker nodes.