2^nd International Workshop on
Workflow Systems in e-Science

(WSES 07)

in conjunction with

International Conference on Computational Science 2007

(http://staff.science.uva.nl/~zhiming/workshop/wses/,

http://www.iccs-meeting.org/iccs2007)

May 27-30, 2007, Beijing, China

(CFPPDF | CFPTXT | Program | Report | 2006)

( new! Special session in Int’l Journal FGCS,

deadline extended to November 11, 07)

Aims and scope

Grid environments enable collaborations involving large numbers of people and large scale resources, and promote the emergence of a new paradigm for scientific research: e-Science. Different layers of middleware, e.g., for managing Grid resources, computing tasks, data, and information, form the basic framework for realising an e-Science environment. By automating the management of experiment routines, a scientific workflow management system hides the underlying integration details of the e-Science resources and allows a scientist to focus on the high level domain specific aspects of the experiments. The support for scientific workflows is being recognised as a crucial feature for introducing an e-Science environment to application scientists from different domains.

The WSES workshop focuses on practical aspects of scientific workflow management systems: design, implementation, applications in all fields of computational science, interoperability among workflows and the e-Science infrastructure, e.g., knowledge framework, for workflow management. The workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers and developers in the field of e-Science to exchange the latest experience and research ideas on scientific workflow management and e-Science. Live demos of workflow systems and workflow application are welcome.

The WSES 06 was successfully held in the context of International Conference of Computational Science 2006 in Reading University in May 29 2006. The workshop attracted 29 submissions. Each paper was reviewed by at least three referees, and 17 papers, including 9 regular ones and 8 short ones, were accepted. The presentations were organized as three sessions: scientific workflows applications, system architecture and middleware, and development issues. One discussion session was organized at the end of the workshop. Selected papers are to be appeared in a special issue of Scientific Programming Journal.

Topics

Authors are invited to submit original manuscripts that demonstrate current research in all areas of scientific workflow management in e-Science. The workshop solicits novel papers on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

Workflow infrastructure and e-Science middleware
Workflow API and graphical user interface
Workflow modelling techniques
Workflow specification language
Workflow execution engine
Dynamic workflow control
Workflow verification and validation
Workflow system performance analysis
Support tools for managing workflows
AI techniques in workflow management, e.g., planning, runtime control and user support;
Security control in managing workflow
Real-world applications of scientific workflow
Different levels of interoperability among workflow systems;
Automatic composition of scientific workflow;
Knowledge infrastructure in workflow management;

Paper submission and publication

Authors should submit electronically a full (8-page) paper to the workshop via the ICCS 2007 paper submission system. The papers will be carefully evaluated based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of expression. Accepted papers should be presented at the workshop. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series by Springer-Verlag. Selected best papers, after extension, will be published in a suitable international journal as a special issue.

Important Dates

December 17, 2006 Full paper due
February 3, 2007 Notification
February 19, 2007 Camera-ready paper due

Program

Session 1:

Workflow system design and interoperability

1. (2680): Oral, A. Goderis, University of Manchester, Composing Different Models of Computation in Kepler and Ptolemy II

2. (2632): Oral, L. Hu, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Role Perspectives of Complex Product Development Management in the Context of WFMS

3. (2565): Oral, A. Wibisono, University of Amsterdam, WS-VLAM: A GT4 Based Workflow Management System

4. (2178): Short, I. Valuev, Joint Institute for High Temperatures of Russian Academy of Sciences, Distributed Applications From Scratch: Using GridMD Workflow Patterns

5. (2350): Short, V. Curcin, Imperial College London, Heterogeneous workflows in scientific workflow systems

6. (2658): Short, P. Jiang, Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech., A Multi-Agent System for Cross-Organizational Workflows Management Based on Process-View

7. (2760): Short, F. Terpstra, University of Amsterdam, Towards a formal foundation for aggregating scientific workflows

Session 2:

Workflow application and execution

8. (2097): Oral, G. Zhang, Tongji University, Autonomic Workflow Management in the Grid

9. (2645): Oral, L. Huang, Zhejiang University, Framework for Workflow Parallel Execution in Grid Environment

10. (2695): Oral, Y. Cho, soongsil university, Toward Dynamic Adoption for a User's Situation Information in a Context-Aware Workflow System

11. (2718): Oral, L. Wang and J. L. Ram, Wayne State University, A Dataflow-Oriented Atomicity and Provenance System for Pipelined Scientific Workflows

12. (2128): Short, J. Wang, National University of Defence Technology, Efficient Load Balancing Model for the Complex Distributed Workflow Management Systems

13. (2552): Short, W. Pinheiro, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Dynamic Workflow Management for P2P Environments using Agents

Session 3:

Workflow modelling and knowledge framework

14. (413): Oral, Huang, Peiking Univ. Analyzing Data Dependence Based on Workflow Net

15. (2709): Oral, M. Babik, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Knowledge-based Grid Workflow System

16. (1424): Oral, G Xue, University of Southampton, Building Scientific Workflows for Earth System Modelling with Windows Workflow Foundation

17. (2684): Renê Rodrigues Veloso and Autran Macêdo, Balancing Quality and Performance of Task Distribution in Workflow Based on Resource Aptitude

Programme committee

Pieter Adriaans (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Ilkay Altintas (University of California, USA)
Marian Bubak (AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland)
Ewa Deelman (University of Southern California, USA)
Bob Hertzberger(University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Andreas Hoheisel (Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology, Germany)
Lican Huang (Zhejiang University, China)
Peter Kacsuk (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungarian)
Cees de Laat (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Minglu Li (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China)
Ling Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Shiyong Lu (Wayne State University, USA)
Syed Naqvi (CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK)
Peter Rice (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
Ian Taylor (Cardiff University, UK)
Zhiwei Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)

Report

The second international workshop on Workflow Systems in e-Science (WSES 07) organized by Zhiming Zhao and Adam Belloum was successfully held in the context of International Conference of Computational Science (ICCS 2007) in Beijing in May 29 and 30, 2007. The first WSES event was held in ICCS 2006 in Reading University, UK. WSES07 attracted 31 submissions. Each paper was reviewed by at least three referees, and 17 papers, including 10 regular ones and 7 short ones, were accepted. The presentations were organized as three sessions. In total, six speakers were not able to attend the workshop.

Sessions

The first session (35a, Chaired by Zhao) includes 4 papers.

· Composing Different Models of Computation in Kepler and Ptolemy II: presented by Antoon Goderis. The talk gave an interesting insight on the problem of combining different computing models in hierarchical workflows, it turns out from this study that even if a system, e.g., Kepler, supports different computing models, it does not always work or lead to a useful combination.

· WS-VLAM: A GT4 Based Workflow Management System. Presented by Adam Belloum. The talk describes the architecture of a distributed workflow management system. The proposed architecture is based on Web Service Resource Framework. In WS-VLAM, workflow composer and engine are loosely coupled, and other web service compliant workflow engines, e.g., Taverna, can be integrated in VLAM workflows.

· Distributed Applications from Scratch: Using GridMD Workflow Patterns: presented some requirements of Molecular Dynamics and Monte-Carlo simulations application and proposed a solution to automate the generation of the workflow components using a C++ library.

· A Multi-agent System for Cross-Organizational Workflows Management Based on Process-View: addressed the interoperability across enterprises boundaries. And described the Process-view as a promising way to cross-organizational workflows design. The talk presented a multi-agent architecture combined with Petri net based process-view approach to facilitate cross-organizational workflows management.

The session (35b, chaired by Belloum) includes 3 papers:

· Toward Dynamic Adoption for a User’s Situation Information in a Context-Aware Workflow System presented by Yongyun Cho. The talk describes a context-aware workflow system for ubiquitous computing environments. The proposed systems supports dynamic changes of services at runtime without stopping the of workflow execution. The system uses DItree data structure to organize the tree information to achieve easy and fast dynamic changes.

· A Dataflow-Oriented Atomicity and Provenance System for Pipelined Scientific Workflows presented by Liqiang Wang, and Jeffrey Ram. The talk describes an architecture for scientific workflow management systems that supports both provenance and atomicity. The atomicity model supports the notions of commit/abort while the provenance model in addition to supporting existing provenance graphs and queries, also supports queries related to atomicity and failure.

· Dynamic Workflow Management for P2P Environments Using Agents
presented by Barros. The talk describes a P2P framework for dynamic workflows, which uses contracts to deal with unexpected changes in the flow of activities. The presented system provides adequate support for e-Science experiments defined as workflows, with tasks operating in distributed environments and diverse types of computational resources and data.

The third section (35c, chaired by Zhao) includes 4 papers:

· Knowledge-Based Grid Workflow System
presented by Michal Laclavik, Zoltan Balogh, Ladislav Hluchy, and Ondrej Habala. The talk described a grid enabled workflow system on the semantic grid services. The proposed system allows abstract workflow composition and automatic creation of concrete workflows based on semantically enabled service discovery. The semantic grid service model is based on the Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF) and the Web Service Ontology (OWL-S).

· Building Scientific Workflows for Earth System Modeling with Windows Workflow Foundation presented by Gang Xue. The talk describes a framework using Windows Workflow Foundation technologies. The proposed framework supports collaborative study across heterogeneous compute grids through scripted workflows in the Matlab environment.

· A Process Meta Model to Support Policy Based Management in Workflow System presented by Hao Xu. The paper described a Policy-based and process-based management. The process meta model allow flexibility at design time, adaptability at run-time, and support business rules across the enterprise.

· Towards a Formal Foundation for Aggregating Scientific Workflows
presented by Frank Terpstra. The talk describes a formal model to allow reasoning about the execution models of workflow systems. The model is based on I/O Automata to prove the correctness of workflows involving multiple workflow engines and execution models

Summary

The talks presented at the workshop did cover various issues related to workflow and their usage in e-Science. Following is the list of topic addressed in the workshop:

Composition of different model of computing
Grid enabled workflow engine
Automatic workflow component generation
Cross-Organizational workflows management
Autonomic workflow management and parallel execution on the Grid
Atomicity and provenance for pipelined scientific workflow
Dynamic workflow Management for P2P systems.
Context aware workflow management
Knowledge base workflow and semantic discovery of workflow
Modeling with Windows Workflow Foundation
Policy-based and process-based workflow management.
Formal foundation for workflow aggregation

Looking at the list of issues addressed in the presentations, it is clear that there are opportunities for collaboration among the research groups. The ideal workflow systems for e-Science should indeed have all the features developed in various systems presented in this workshop. The ideal workflow management system should allow abstract workflow composition, and automatically or semi-automatic generates concrete workflow. It should allow a validation of the composed workflow preferably semantic before the execution. At run time the ideal workflow system should be able to use grid enabled resources, allow the monitoring and when needed apply changes to the workflow without having to restart or stop the execution. It should also allow job farming and parameter sweep, the execution of complex workflow using various systems, support data provenance, and provide intuitive user and developer interfaces.

Feedback

Feedback from our audience.

A special session in Int’l journal of Future Generation Computer System (FGCS)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Future Generation Computer System (FGCS) announces a forthcoming special session based on Workflow Systems in e-Science (WSES in ICCS 2007).

As the author of papers submitted to Int’l workshop on Workflow systems in e-Science 2007 (WSES) , Int’l workshop on Scientific Workflows (SWF in IEEE Web Service 2007), and Int’l workshop on Scientific Workflow and Business workflow standards in e-Science (SWBES in IEEE e-Science 2006), you are invited to submit your UPDATED and EXTENDED version of the paper on the workshop proceedings to the FGCS, if your paper is within one of the aspects of workflow systems and e-Science, but not limited to:

Workflow infrastructure and e-Science middleware
Workflow API and graphical user interface
Workflow modelling techniques
Workflow specification language
Workflow execution engine
Dynamic workflow control
Workflow verification and validation
Workflow system performance analysis
Support tools for managing workflows
AI techniques in workflow management, e.g., planning, runtime control and user support;
Security control in managing workflow
Real-world applications of scientific workflow
Different levels of interoperability among workflow systems;
Automatic composition of scientific workflow;
Knowledge infrastructure in workflow management;
Workflow applications and their requirements
Workflow representations, including semantic workflow descriptions
Applying business workflows to the scientific domain
Workflow composition, tools and languages
Workflow user environments, including portals
Workflow refinement tools that can manage the workflow mapping process
Workflow execution in distributed environments
Workflow fault-tolerance and recovery techniques
Data-driven workflow processing
Adaptive workflows
Workflow monitoring
Workflow optimizations
Performance analysis of workflows
Workflow debugging
Workflow provenance

Papers concerning works presented at the WSES 2007, SWF 2007 and SWBES 06 workshop can be submitted, provided that new and original results are included. The submitted paper must be formatted according to the formatting rules of the FGCS (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs). Please follow the FGCS guidelines for more information on paper submission, at http://www.elsevier.com/framework_products/promis_misc/gfafuture.pdf

We would like to invite you to upload the source files of your article for the special section of Future Generation Computer Systems WSES 07. The files should be submitted to us through the journal's editorial handling system http://ees.elsevier.com/fgcs/ Please register at the site, if you have not yet used the system, select Author Log-in, and upload editable source files for manuscript (Word, LaTeX, ...) and figures, mentioning that the paper is part of the special section WSES 07. Please choose the Article Type ''SS: WSES 07". The system will then prepare a pdf for approval. When the "approval" button is clicked, the paper will be submitted.

Regarding format: On the journal homepage www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs there is a Guide for Authors providing instructions and requirements for papers. There is no journal template, and we prefer to have no elaborate lay-out as that will be removed anyway. We do require however the submission of author biographies and photographs. An elementary structure of title, author names, affiliations, abstract, text, references, figure captions, figures would be sufficient. The number of pages of the submitted paper should be related to the content of the paper:superfluous material is to be avoided. Usually uploading takes less than 10 minutes.
If you encounter any problems in the use of the online system, please do not hesitate to contact authorsupport@elsevier.com

Important information:
1. Submission deadline is extended to Nov-11-2007.

2. Papers previously considered for a conference should be resubmitted for the special section in updated and improved versions. All papers will need to be reviewed again using the reviewer database of the journal's online submission system EES.

3. The number of papers to be included in the special section is to be around 6. If you would like to include more papers, please contact the Journal's Content Development Manager of the Journal Manager.

4. FYI To determine the number of pages: On average 10 manuscript pages in the PDF give 6.5 journal pages. This is exclusive of figures. The number of 10 pages is an average, as an editor might prefer one paper longer at the expense of another one. In general, to prevent overdue stress on page limitations: the number of pages of the submitted paper should be related to the content of the paper: superfluous material is to be avoided.

5. Please check out the following links and forward them to your authors/co-workers:
- WSES: http://staff.science.uva.nl/~zhiming/workshop/wses/
- Journal Description: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs
- Electronic Submission: http://ees.elsevier.com/fgcs/
- On-line Journal: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0167739X

Important Deadlines:

1.                         September 15, 2007: Abstract submission (If you missed this, you can still submit the full paper. )

2.                         October 15, extended to November 11, 2007: Full paper submission

3.                         January 30, 2007: Reviewing results reported to authors

4.                         February 25, 2008: Final paper submission

Organisers

Dr. Zhiming Zhao
email: zhiming@science.uva.nl

Tel: +31 20 5257599

Fax: +31 20 5257490

www: staff.science.uva.nl/~zhiming

Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam
1098SJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Dr. Adam Belloum
email: adam@science.uva.nl

www: staff.science.uva.nl/~adam