GridNet2 Report - Open Grid Forum 22
Andrew Harrison (ID - 122)
School of Computer Science,
Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
email: a.b.harrison@cs.cf.ac.uk
4th March 2008
This report provides an overview of developments in the Workflow Management RG at
the Open Grid Forum (OGF) 22 meeting in Boston, Feb 25-28, 2008.
1
Workflow Sharing and Interoperability Session
The week before OGF22, I created an online questionnaire (http://bender.astro.cf.ac.uk/wfmrg)
in order to elicit opinions, experiences and requirements from users, designers and developers of workflow systems regarding interoperability and sharing. This was disseminated to
a variety of groups including the WFM-RG and OGSA-WG. We received some responses,
and these are still coming in.
The WFM-RG Session itself was very well attended with 34 registered participants. Ian
Taylor presented an overview of what we had discussed in the previous two OGF meetings.
Then I presented a summary of the results from the questionnaire. The feedback from the
questionnaire showed that there are a number of projects that require interoperability and
sharing. The possible approaches to achieving these fell into three main categories:
• workflow embedding - allowing workflows to run within their own environment, but
invoked from another.
• the development of a meta language - allowing different proprietary languages to be
mapped to a single standard one.
• semantic annotation/description/classification - particularly important for sharing.
We then opened up the session for discussion which was very fruitful. Six participants
offered their services in helping produce a document that builds on the preliminary analysis
of the questionnaire. The aim of this document is to provide a means of understanding
the requirements and challenges of the three approaches to interoperability. The different
approaches may lead to different solutions e.g. APIs and workflow language specifications.
It is hoped that addressing the challenge on different levels will result in greater uptake and
involvement from the community than a one-size-fits-all approach. Work on the document
has now begun.
2
Requested Clarifications from Application
• Are there any other sources of funding?
The project that funds my current position has enough travel for one person to a
European destination.
• Are there any other sources of funding that might enable participation beyond OGF22?
We aim to use the travel funds available from my current project to fund my travel
to OGF23.
1
• What precisely would be your intention to achieve specifically at OGF22?
We specifically wanted to move beyond the discussion phase on workflow interoperability and sharing. We achieved this through gaining a commitment from a number
of members of the community with wide-ranging specialisms and experiences to contribute to a research document on the issues of interoperability and sharing.
• If integration with the OGSA workflow group is an aim, is it mentioned how would
you go about this?
Things have moved on somewhat. The OGSA WG workflow discussions are now
waiting on the WFM group to produce some results in terms of interoperability and
sharing standards with the aim of integrating these results. A member of OGSA WG
has kindly agreed to contribute to the WFM document.
• What are the results that are preliminary?
The preliminary results are the dissemination of our strategy regarding interoperability and sharing. We spent OGF20 and 21 discussing with members of the community
the possible approaches to interoperability. I would suggest that there is some consensus at least on the fact that there are different mechanisms by which flavors of
interoperability might be achieved. This is a step forward from the view that only a
wholesale adoption of some specification (e.g. BPEL) is the way forward.
• It would be helpful to have more detail about your goals and the time frames required
to achieve them.
We achieved our goal for OGF22, which was to get commitments from members
of the community to contribute to a document setting out the possible routes to
interoperability. We aim to have completed this document by OGF23 where we can
present the results. Building on top of this, during the following year we would
hope to achieve some tangible guidelines for the community as well as examples of
interoperability and sharing between projects.