A Formal Approach to Support Interoperability in Scientific Meta-workflows

Abstract

-Scientific workflows orchestrate the execution of complex experiments frequently using distributed computing platforms. Meta-workflows represent an emerging type of such workflows which aim to reuse existing workflows from potentially different workflow systems to achieve more complex and experimentation minimizing workflow design and testing efforts. Workflow interoperability plays a profound role in achieving this objective. This paper is focused at fostering interoperability across meta-workflows that combine workflows of different workflow systems from diverse scientific domains. This is achieved by formalizing definitions of meta-workflow and its different types to standardize their data structures used to describe workflows to be published and shared via public repositories. The paper also includes thorough formalization of two workflow interoperability approaches based on this formal description: the coarse-grained and fine-grained workflow interoperability approach. The paper presents a case study from Astrophysics which successfully demonstrates the use of the concepts of meta-workflows and workflow interoperability within a scientific simulation platform.

Scientific workflows: Past, present and future

“…Garijo et al [6] report one example in this issue as they address the first symptom, while Plankensteiner et al [11] proposes an intermediate workflow language addressing the second one. Terstyanszky et al [12] report a different approach with alternative formal foundations [13]. The Common Workflow Language (CWL) [14] has been developed by an informal, multi-vendor working group consisting of various organizations and individuals that have an interest in portability of data analysis workflows, e.g., Galaxy [15] and Taverna are participants in this group.…”

“…As the tools and operations to manage a whole workflow lifetime become more sophisticated, as the variety of users increases, and as the scale of communities and research campaigns grow, the measurement of usability with involvement of the communities will be essential. Diverse usability standards, metrics and guidelines exist 13 to measure usability and fundamental research on usability is well supported. In industry the importance has been recognised already years ago and considered in product design and software engineering and is evident in Apple products, for example.…”

Science Gateway Workshops 2015 Special Issue Conference Publications

“…The second paper in this chapter, "A Formal Approach to Support Interoperability in Scientific Meta-workflows" by Arshad et al [10], contributes to the definition and analysis of meta-workflow approaches for complex scientific meta-workflows. The authors examine how workflow interoperability plays a role in achieving the objective of reusing existing workflows from potentially different workflow systems to achieve more complex and experimentation minimizing workflow design and testing efforts.…”