GridNet2 Funding Report
OGF 20, Manchester, May 7th-11th 2007
Matthew Shields [m.s.shields@cs.cf.ac.uk]
Gridnet2 ID: 124
School of Computer Science, Cardiff University
June 5, 2007
This report provides details of the activities undertaken by the author funded by the GridNet2
grant at the Open Grid Forum (OGF20) meeting, held in Manchester, May 7th to 11th 2007.
Workflow Management Research Group (WfM-RG) – Sharing Workflows
The Workflow Management Research Group session on sharing workflows was the most important session both in terms of my interest and the basis of the proposal under which I received
the GridNet2 funding, namely to assist restarting interest and activity in the research group. My
contribution to the session consisted of taking notes, and participating in the group discussions,
and kick-starting the groups research document, details of which follow.
The session focussed on the current perceived need to be able to share workflows for scientific applications between scientists, both within and external to the groups performing the science. Unlike previous standardisation efforts for creating a single common workflow language
that could be adopted by all tools and execution engines, the session’s focus was on sharing
workflows between differing tools using diverse workflow language representations.
Ian Taylor opened the session by contrasting the views of the OGSA workflow group where
the predominant view is that of a standard workflow language with the members of the WfM
group where diverse tools and languages exist. An analogy was drawn with a conventional
programming paradigm and trying to force programmers to adopt a common editor, language
and compiler or interpreter. There are lots of coexisting systems so the focus should be on the
scientist, helping them to share workflows. Comments on Ian’s opening included; has a study
been done on whether there is a real need for scientific workflow; how many grid applications
actually use workflow; and the point was made that workflows often work better with Grids than
other applications so problems are often thought of in workflow terms. It was proposed that the
next group output should be an OGF research report on workflow sharing.
Following Ian there were a number of presenters focussing on; levels of interoperability
(Adrian Toth, University of Miskolc) and standardisation efforts within industry, wfMC.org,
OASIS, OMG — comments discussed the relationship between abstract definitions (XPDL)
and concrete implementations (BPEL); sharing workflows (Omer Rana, Cardiff University),
incentives, abstract vs. concrete workflow sharing, annotations and provenance — comments,
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how does provenance help workflow interoperability; workflow optimisation and sharing (Rizos Sakellariou, University of Manchester) optimisation information discovered when executing
workflows should not be lost through the process of sharing; myExperiment and social software
for workflow sharing (David De Roure, University of Southampton and OMII-UK) introduced
Web2.0 paradigms to workflow sharing; WHIP (Andrew Harrison, Cardiff University) sharing
workflows between desktop tools and collaborative Web portals — comments, compared approach to Web application “mashup”, really more like an agent system; Shibboleth and security
in workflow sharing approaches (Richard Sinnott, NeSC, University of Glasgow) using shibboleth attributes in creating more flexible and dynamic authorisation policies across Grids and
portals for sharing workflow — comments, does this approach allow delegation mechanisms,
the service has the optional ability to allow an authorised user to further delegate; quality of
service guarantees (Dimosthenis Kyriazis, Telecommunications Laboratory, National Technical
University of Athens), an approach to mapping abstract workflow and QoS parameters to concrete federated providers — comments, how is the SLA monitored? a separate component used
by all workflow engines.
After the presentations the meeting content was summarised and a request for contributions
to the research document made.
GridNet2 Advisory Board
As this was my first GridNet2 participation I attended the advisory board to observe the workings
of the grant and get a wider appreciation of the sorts of activities being undertaken under it.
Other sessions
I participated in a number of other OGF sessions including some of EGEE Workflow Convener
meetings, the EU presentation, and one of the Astronomical Virtual Observer meetings.
Summary
Although this was not my first OGF/GGF meeting, it was the first funded under GridNet2.
As such I concentrated on the workflow aspects of the meeting which met the goals of my
original proposal. The main reason for attending was the sharing workflows session held by
the Workflow Management Research Group which proved to be a worthwhile and interesting
session. The approach to workflow sharing among differing tools and languages rather than
attempting to create a one “size fits all” standardisation effort seemed to strike a chord with the
meeting participants.
Actions
• Ensure the WfM-RG Web pages are updated with the meeting summary and presentation
slides.
• Kick start the WfM-RG research document on workflow sharing and solicit contributions
before OGF21 in Seattle.
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