Kepler + MeDICi Service-Oriented Scientific Workflow Applications

Abstract

Scientific applications are often structured as workflows that execute a series of interdependent, distributed software modules to analyze large data sets. The order of execution of the tasks in a workflow is commonly controlled by complex scripts, which over time become difficult to maintain and evolve. In this paper, we describe how we have integrated the Kepler scientific workflow platform with the MeDICi Integration Framework, which has been specifically designed to provide a standards-based, lightweight and flexible integration platform. The MeDICi technology provides a scalable, component-based architecture that efficiently handles integration with heterogeneous, distributed software systems. This paper describes the MeDICi Integration Framework and the mechanisms we used to integrate MeDICi components with Kepler workflow actors. We illustrate this solution with a workflow application for an atmospheric sciences application. The resulting solution promotes a strong separation of concerns, simplifying the Kepler workflow description and promoting the creation of a reusable collection of components available for other workflow applications in this domain.