The LabFlow system for workflow management in large scale biology research laboratories.

Abstract

LabFlow is a workflow management system designed for large scale biology research laboratories. It provides a workflow model in which objects flow from task to task under programmatic control. The model supports parallelism, meaning that an object can flow down several paths simultaneously, and sub-workflows which can be invoked subroutine-style from a task. The system allocates tasks to Unix processes to achieve requisite levels of multiprocessing. The system uses the LabBase data management system to store workflow-state and laboratory results. LabFlow provides a Per15 object-oriented framework for defining workflows, and an engine for executing these. The software is freely available.