Service-Oriented Architecture for VIEW: A Visual Scientific Workflow Management System

Scientific workflows have recently emerged as a new paradigm for scientists to formalize and structure complex and distributed scientific processes to enable and accelerate many scientific discoveries. In contrast to business workflows, which are typically controlflow oriented, scientific workflows tend to be dataflow oriented, introducing a new set of requirements for system development. These requirements demand a new architectural design for scientific workflow management systems (SWFMSs). Although several SWFMSs have been developed that provide much experience for future research and development, a study from an architectural perspective is still missing. The main contributions of this paper are: i) based on a comprehensive survey of the literature and identification of key requirements for SWFMSs, we propose the first reference architecture for SWFMSs, ii) in compliance with the reference architecture, we further propose a service-oriented architecture for VIEW (a VIsual sciEntific Workflow management system), iii) we implement VIEW to validate the feasibility of the proposed architectures, and iv) we present two case studies to showcase the applications of our VIEW system

Advanced Architectures for Transactional Workflows or Advanced Transactions in Workflow Architectures

In this short paper, we outline the workflow management systems research in the Information Systems division at the University of Twente. We discuss the two main themes in this research: architecture design and advanced transaction management. Attention is paid to the coverage of these themes in the context of the completed Mercurius and WIDE projects and in the new CrossFlow project. In the latter project, contracts are introduced as a new theme to support electronic commerce aspects in workflow management

Scientific Workflow Integration For Services Computing

In recent years, significant scientific advances are increasingly achieved through complex scientific processes. As the exponential growth in computing technologies and scientific data, a scientific workflow may comprise a large number of heterogeneous scientific services and applications, provided by different organizations. These services, applications, and their associated data are usually distributed across heterogeneous computing environments. The integration and management of such scientific workflows are pushing the limits of current workflow technology. This dissertation presents an integrated solution to composing, scheduling, executing and developing scientific workflows and scientific workflow management systems. To provide a foundation for workflow composition, scheduling, execution and management, we propose the first reference architecture for scientific workflow management systems. The reference architecture not only provides a high-level organization of subsystems and their interactions in a workflow system, but also provides a basis for comparison between different systems and a guidance for the architectural design of an SWFMS in a specific scientific domain. To integrate heterogeneous services and applications and enable them composed to workflows, we propose a task template model which not only provides an appropriate abstraction of heterogeneous services and applications, but also encapsulates the composition and mapping of shims and functional task components within a task interface. Our proposed task specification language (TSL) not only integrates heterogeneous services and applications into uniform workflow tasks, but also provides a solution to address both TYPE-I and TYPE-II shimming problems in composing scientific workflows. To schedule scientific workflows in emerging services computing environments, we propose two workflow scheduling algorithms, the SHEFT algorithm and the SCPOR algorithm, to prioritize tasks in a workflow, map tasks onto suitable resources and order the execution of tasks on the assigned resources, so that the workflow makespan can be minimized. Our extensive experiments have shown that our proposed algorithms not only outperform other algorithms for large-scale, data-intensive and compute intensive workflows, but also allow the assigned resources elastically change on demand of the size of workflows. To execute workflows on distributed computing environments, we propose a task run model to model the run-time behaviors of tasks. The proposed task run description language (TRDL) enables the execution of task instances constructed from heterogeneous services and applications. We also develop an SOA based task management subsystem to manage all task templates, task instances and task runs for the invocation and execution of various heterogeneous task components. Finally, our developed SOA based workflow management system, the VIEW system, and a VIEW based workflow application system, the FiberFlow system, validate our architectures, models, languages, and algorithms

A component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems

This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described

The design and development of a mobile workflow learning application

The aim of this research is the implementation of a Software Reference Architecture for WfLMS (Workflow Learning Management Systems) with Mobile, Cloud and Collaborative functionalities in order to develop a WFLMS as a native application for the iOS platform. Workflow Learning is the adaptation of WfMS (Workflow Management Systems) from the business domain in the learning domain. Cesarini et al. (2004) support the e-learning process with a WfMS and makes a perfect adaptation of the learning process as a Workflow, explains in a simple way that a Workflow which is made by participants, actions, documents and a set of procedural rules, can be adapted in a learning environment, the actors involved in the learning process are the participants, the learning activities are the actions, the artifacts students can produce are the documents and the relationship among the learning topics are the procedural rules. The Reference Architecture has been adapted in order to provide the best WfLMS solution, taking advantage of the cloud, mobile and collaborative functionalities for the learning environment. The Notification Tools module in the Reference Architecture contains the notification tools for keeping the user updated about the state of the Workflow Learning instances, tasks and activities where the user is collaborating. Push notifications and Twitter were used as the principal notification tools. The Collaboration and Storage Applications in the Cloud module is the repository of the cloud collaborative applications and the storage management applications in the cloud. Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote are the mobile cloud applications for supporting the collaboration in the WfLMS. The Mobile Services Tool module contains the API’s for accessing the mobile services available in the cloud, in that way the mobile workflow learning application can extend its functionalities. The functionalities that social media services offer are key for the collaboration in the WfLMS. Cloud Content Management System Tool module contains the API’s for connecting with the storage services in the cloud (Dropbox, Drive and Evernote), in order to provide the functionality of a content management system (CMS) in the WfLMS The implementation of the software architecture was the development of a native application for the iOS platform. The application was published in the Apple Store with the name of WOLF (Work Linear Flow). In the WOLF application, the users can create projects and associate Workflows to them, a Twitter hashtag is created for each project so in that way the users can post tweets about the learning activities that are related to the Workflows, the project and communicate with other users for collaboration. The users can open Twitter inside WOLF in order to see the list of tweets related to the hashtags of the projects.Postprint (published version

A product line for workflow management systems

This paper presents an ongoing research on the development of a component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems. The research includes a process to design the proposed product line, the population of the product with components, the product member production process, architecture evaluation mechanisms using architecture description languages and support tools, a variability management process and the development of case studies to evaluate each proposed technique

Engineering Workflow: The Process in Product Data Technology

The prevailing paradigm for enterprises in the new decade is undoubtedly speed. This enterprise view is driven by the availability of e-business technology that enables new forms of collaboration between companies. The rapid developments in e-business also have an impact on the future of engineering organizations. This paper focuses on the early phases of a product’s life cycle, i.e. between initial concept and release to manufacturing. New engineering workflow capabilities are presented, that have been tailored to speed up the engineering of new products