Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)We review several facets of the hydrodynamic description of the relativistic heavy ion collisions, starting from the historical motivation to the present understandings of the observed collective aspects of experimental data, especially those of the most recent RHIC and LHC results. In this report, we particularly focus on the conceptual questions and the physical foundations of the validity of the hydrodynamic approach itself. We also discuss recent efforts to clarify some of the points in this direction, such as the various forms of derivations of relativistic hydrodynamics together with the limitations intrinsic to the traditional approaches, variational approaches, known analytic solutions for special cases, and several new theoretical developments. Throughout this review, we stress the role of course-graining procedure in the hydrodynamic description and discuss its relation to the physical observables through the analysis of a hydrodynamic mapping of a microscopic transport model. Several questions to be answered to clarify the physics of collective phenomena in the relativistic heavy ion collisions are pointed out. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.86 3585Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)PRONEXFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)FAPESP [2014/09167-8]