Workflow

[Tony Linde]

(I'm assuming Interop is the right list for this message.)

It was mentioned during the exec meeting/telecon that IVOA ought to look at
standards for workflow. I must say that I think this would be an unnecessary
drain on our resources when we already have too many things to work on
standardizing.

Presumably any such standard would state the way that a workflow ought to be
described so that it could be submitted to some unnamed workflow engine for
execution. But why would we need such a standard?

Any project which wishes to develop a workflow creation, submission &
execution tool would write the appropriate software so that a user could
select from a set of tools and data sources (from the registry) and string
them together with some flow logic into the workflow. This would then be
submitted to a job execution service etc.

The only reason for standards in the workflow arena is if we expect that
people willl want to create a workflow using one project's tools and then
submit it to the job execution service run by another project. I think this
is highly unlikely and certainly not something that will gain us sufficient
benefits that we need to push effort into it now.

We already have a wide range of efforts proceeding: we need more registry
standards, more data models, more data accecss standards as well as the new
events effort. I really think that to start, or even start discussing,
workflow standards at this point is superfluous.

Can someone persuade me that we do need workflow standards?

Cheers,
Tony. 

__
Tony Linde
Phone:  +44 (0)116 223 1292    Mobile: +44 (0)7753 603356
Fax:    +44 (0)116 252 3311    Email:  ael at star.le.ac.uk
Post:   Department of Physics & Astronomy,
        University of Leicester
        Leicester, UK   LE1 7RH
Web:    http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~ael
            
Project Manager, EuroVO VOTech   http://eurovotech.org 
Programme Manager, AstroGrid     http://www.astrogrid.org 
Co-Director,
 Leicester e-Science Centre      http://www.e-science.le.ac.uk/