Workflow

[Tony Linde]

That's right, Alex. Getting standard ways of finding and invoking services,
and reading from and writing to VOSpace are critical at this stage.

> 	(ii) can capture and log messages in some format

Hadn't thought of that one. Log4vo? :)

T.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-interop at eso.org [mailto:owner-interop at eso.org] On 
> Behalf Of Alex Szalay
> Sent: 19 January 2005 18:48
> To: Tony Linde; Interop IVOA
> Subject: RE: Workflow
> 
> My 2 cents:
> 
> I fully agree with Tony, since I think there will never be a 
> "standard"
> workflow system, thus we will have to live with and love many 
> different workflow environments, each having some advantages 
> over others in some area.
> 
> We should only ensure, that our existing frameworks can easily
> 	(i) submit jobs to such workflow environments,
> 	(ii) can capture and log messages in some format
> 	(iii) capture and save the outputs as part of VOSpace.
> 
> Then we can use a multitude of these services in a useful and 
> tolarant fashion.
> 
> Cheers, Alex
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-interop at eso.org [mailto:owner-interop at eso.org]On 
> Behalf Of Tony Linde
> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 12:50 PM
> To: Interop IVOA
> Subject: Workflow
> 
> 
> (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/
>