Abstract
Life scientists use workflow systems for service orchestration to design their computer based experiments. These workflow systems require life scientists to design complete workflows before they can be run. Traditional workflow systems not support the explorative research approach life scientists prefer. In life science, it often happens that few steps are known in advance. Even if these steps are known, connecting these tasks still remains difficult.
We have extended the e-BioFlow workflow system with an ad-hoc editor to support on-the-fly workflow design. This ad-hoc editor enables an ad-hoc design of the workflow with no predetermined plan of the final workflow. Users can execute partial workflows and extend these workflows using intermediate results. The ad-hoc editor enables its users to explore data and tasks representing tools and web services, in order to debug the workflow and to optimise parameter settings. Furthermore, it guides its users to find and connect compatible tasks. The result is a new workflow editor that simplifies workflow design and that better fits the explorative research style life scientists prefer.
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Wassink, I., Ooms, M., van der Vet, P. (2009). Designing Workflows on the Fly Using e-BioFlow. In: Baresi, L., Chi, CH., Suzuki, J. (eds) Service-Oriented Computing. ServiceWave ICSOC 2009 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5900. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10383-4_35
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