The WASA Approach to Workflow Management for Scientific Applications

Abstract

Workflow management has gained increasing attention recently, since it allows one to combine a data-oriented view on applications, which is the traditional one for an information system, with a process-oriented one in which activities and their occurrences over time are modeled and supported properly. While workflow management has mostly been considered in business applications so far, the focus of the WASA project is on scientific applications such as geoprocessing, molecular biology, or laboratory environments. In particular, WASA aims at flexible and platform-independent workflow support, with respect to both specification and execution of workflows. It turns out that the modeling and execution of workflows in traditional and in scientific applications exhibit significant differences. In particular, the need for dynamic modifications of workflow models while workflows are running is an important feature in scientific applications. Observations like these have resulted in a generic WASA architecture, which can be tailored towards various specific application domains. The conceptual design and functionality of a WASA prototype is outlined, in particular that of its core workflow engine, and it is shown how the requirements of flexibility in modeling and executing workflows, imposed by scientific applications, are met by this prototype.