Robust workflows for science and engineering
David Abramson, Blair Bethwaite, Colin Enticott, Slavisa Garic, Tom Peachey, Anushka Michailova, Saleh Amirriazi, Ramya Chitters · 2009
Scientific workflow tools allow users to specify complex computational experiments and provide a good framework for robust science and engineering. Workflows consist of pipelines of tasks that can be used to explore the behaviour of some system, involving computations that are either performed locally or on remote computers. Robust scientific methods require the exploration of the parameter space of a system (some of which can be run in parallel on distributed resources), and may involve complete state space exploration, experimental design or numerical optimization techniques. Whilst workflow engines provide an overall framework, they have not been developed with these concepts in mind, and in general, don't provide the necessary components to implement robust workflows.