Speaker
Ms
Livia Torterolo
(Bio-lab, DIST, University of Genoa)
Description
Scientists, as biologists or bioinformaticians, often deal with complex tasks
involving the integration of results from several computational tools and information
repositories that must be tied together in a coordinated way in order to automate the
execution of a set of analyses.
With the increasing number of databases and processing tools exposed as Web Services,
a workflow managing system able to operate according to the SOA standards is an
essential tool for e-Scientists to take full advantage of such resources.
In a scenario where data sources and services are distributed and there is an
increasing request for computational power, special attention has been given to
workflows based on Grid services which
bring many attractive characteristics such as great efficiency, load balancing, fault
tolerance and reliability.
Making use of SOA principles, Grid-enabled workflows make Grid solutions more
transparent and supported on a wider range of platforms and environments, improving
interoperability among software applications.
Many tools have been developed for the composition and enactment of workflows for the
scientific community but most of today workflow management systems show great
limitations due to their intrinsic client-only nature.
Nice s.r.l. with EnginFrame /GENIUS Grid portal/gateway realizes several
integrations of the Grid technology with the Web Services standards based SOA approach.
Addressing to e-Science community, Nice proposes a Grid-based solution that provides
basic building blocks for workflow construction. This solution both exposes services
as standard Web Services to be used within a client-side workflow engine (Taverna ),
and supports workflow enactment and life cycle management through the batch
submission of a server-side workflow engine (Moteur ).
Applications running on a Grid can be exposed by EnginFrame as WSDL/SOAP standards
Web Services and made available, inside a service-oriented architecture, to consumer
applications.
Furthermore EnginFrame technology hides the complexity of the underlying Grid
infrastructure and provides an additional user-oriented abstraction layer on the Grid.
The most important goal is the introduction of a server-side component for the
execution of workflows on a Grid infrastructure away from user workstation. This
provides advantages from both user’s and administrator’s point of view.
Users don’t have to install any software tools and worry about software upgrade and
maintenance but simply run and monitor their own workflows from everywhere using a
standard Web browser. On the other hand, administrators have a full control of
workflow access and submissions.
Moreover, thanks to multi-platform architecture, this solution can greatly simplify
the development.
Summary
Many tools have been developed for workflow management for e-Science research
community. Most of these tools provide a full featured and friendly user interface
relying on computationally demanding client applications running on local
workstations. This approach is not only limited by the lack of computing resources
but also it is not able to provide functionalities for fault tolerance, pervasive
access and monitoring of the workflow status and results. In this paper we propose a
Grid-based solution based on GENIUS Grid Portal supporting workflow design,
activation and monitoring according to SOA standards.
Author
Ms
Livia Torterolo
(Bio-lab, DIST, University of Genoa)
Co-authors
Mr
Alberto Falzone
(NICE srl)
Mr
Maurizio Melato
(NICE srl)
Mr
Tristan Glatard
(CNRS, I3S laboratory / INRIA, Asclepios team)