[CAnet - news] Scientific Workflows- web services for science and networks

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[An excellent overview of Keppler project - one of several open source
scientific workflow projects.  Workflow tools such as Keppler have wide
application beyond scientific application in areas such as industrial
control systems, sensors, etc. CANARIE's UCLPv2 will allow workflow tools to
be used by researchers and ebusiness application to control the topology and
configuration of the network, including deployment of lightpaths as an
integral part of overall scientific or business supply chain workflow. As a
result the network is no longer a common "plumbing" infrastructure but an
integral part of an application.  Some excerpts from GridToday article at
www.gridtoday.com-- BSA]





  Speeding Scientific Workflows: The Open-Source Kepler Project
              By Paul Tooby, SDSC Senior Science Writer              

  
  The advent of the World Wide Web has brought a whole new world of 
  data, tools, and online services within the reach of scientists. But 
  this wealth of opportunities also brings a new set of challenges, and 
  scientists can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume and variety of 
  resources. To overcome this problem, researchers are developing a 
  user-friendly workflow tool that can organize and automate scientific 
  tasks, helping scientists take full advantage of today's complex 
  software and Web services.
  
  Named Kepler, after the Ptolemy software on which it is built, the new 
  tool is part of the emerging cyberinfrastructure, or integrated 
  technologies for doing today's science. Downloads and more 
  information can be found at <http://kepler-project.org/>.
  
  "With Kepler, scientists from many disciplines can automate complex 
  workflows, without having to become expert programmers," said Bertram 
  Ludäscher, one of the initiators of the Kepler project and an 
  associate professor of Computer Science at UC-Davis and SDSC Fellow. 
  "Kepler's flexibility and its visual programming interface make it 
  easy for scientists to create both low-level 'plumbing workflows' to 
  move data around and start jobs on remote computers, as well as 
  high-level data analysis pipelines that chain together standard or 
  custom algorithms from different scientific domains." 
  
  In its simplest form, Kepler may be thought of as a sort of 
  "scientific robot" that relieves researchers of repetitive tasks so 
  that they can focus on their science. In addition to increasing the 
  efficiency of scientists' own workflows, Kepler will also give 
  researchers increased capabilities to communicate and work together -- 
  searching for, integrating, and sharing data and workflows in 
  large-scale collaborative environments.
  
  
  Scientific Workflows
  
  
  In using software and online resources, scientists typically carry out 
  tasks involving the design and execution of a series of steps, or 
  workflow. A researcher begins by identifying and accessing initial 
  data sets, and proceeds through additional steps using software tools 
  such as Web services, modeling and simulation programs, image 
  processing programs and visualization software. 
  
  Ecologists in the Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge 
  project, which initiated Kepler, study invasive diseases such the the 
  West Nile virus. West Nile virus is spread through mosquitos feeding 
  on migrating birds in a complex dual-vector process. The researchers 
  develop predictions for where and how fast this kind of disease will 
  spread. To do this, ecologists access online data sets about where the 
  mosquitoes and birds are observed to live and migrate. Then they use 
  Web-based ecological niche modeling tools to correlate this 
  information with climate data, computing predictions for where the 
  birds and mosquitos are likely to be found. Automating these steps 
  with Kepler can make it feasible to produce accurate predictions for 
  the spread of an invasive disease far more quickly than previously 
  possible. Automating workflows can yield similar benefits in a wide 
  range of other scientific fields.
  
  In addition to the Ptolemy project described below, which serves as 
  the framework for Kepler, the collaboration currently includes the 
  following projects that span a range of scientific fields:
  
  
  Ecology: the NSF Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge, or 
  SEEK. 
  
  
  Biology: Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program, or 
  SciDAC, in the Department of Energy, and the NSF Encyclopedia of Life 
  project, or EOL. 
  
  
  Geosciences: the NSF GEON project, building a cyberinfrastructure for 
  the geosciences.
  
  
  Environmental science and sensor networks: the NSF Real-time 
  Observatories, Applications, and Data management Network project, or 
  ROADNet.
  
  
  Computational chemistry: the NSF RESearch sURGe ENabled by 
  CyberinfrastructurE project, or RESURGENCE. 
  
  
  
  Enhancing Collaboration
  
  Beyond automating the steps of a given project, workflows captured in 
  Kepler are intended to promote communication and collaboration for 
  scientists in diverse domains -- a crucial capability for today's 
  large-scale interdisciplinary collaborations. "Through its systematic 
  approach to scientific workflows, Kepler can fulfill the important 
  function of publishing analyses, models, data transformation programs, 
  and derived data sets," said Kepler co-initiator Jones. "This gives 
  scientists a way to track the provenance of derived data sets produced 
  through workflow transformations, which is essential to being able to 
  identify appropriate data sets for integration and further research."
  
  

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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.



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