Recycling workflows and services through discovery and reuse: Research Articles

Scientific workflows are becoming a valuable tool for scientists to capture and automate e-Science procedures. Their success brings the opportunity to publish, share, reuse and re-purpose this explicitly captured knowledge. Within the $^{my}$Grid project, we have identified key resources that can be shared including complete workflows, fragments of workflows and constituent services. We have examined the alternative ways that these resources can be described by their authors (and subsequent users) and developed a unified descriptive model to support their later discovery. By basing this model on existing standards, we have been able to extend existing Web service and Semantic Web service infrastructure whilst still supporting the specific needs of the e-Scientist. The $^{my}$Grid components enable a workflow life-cycle that extends beyond execution to include the discovery of previous relevant designs, the reuse of those designs and their subsequent publication. Experience with example groups of scientists indicates that this cycle is valuable. The growing number of workflows and services mean more work is needed to support the user in effective ranking of search results and to support the re-purposing process. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.