Research Article

Grid-Flow: a Grid-enabled scientific workflow system with a Petri-net-based interface

  1. Zhijie Guan*,
  2. Francisco Hernandez,
  3. Purushotham Bangalore,
  4. Jeff Gray,
  5. Anthony Skjellum,
  6. Vijay Velusamy,
  7. Yin Liu

Article first published online: 13 DEC 2005

DOI: 10.1002/cpe.988

Issue

Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience

Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience

Special Issue: Workflow in Grid Systems

Volume 18, Issue 10, pages 1115–1140, 25 August 2006

Additional Information

How to Cite

Guan, Z., Hernandez, F., Bangalore, P., Gray, J., Skjellum, A., Velusamy, V. and Liu, Y. (2006), Grid-Flow: a Grid-enabled scientific workflow system with a Petri-net-based interface. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 18: 1115–1140. doi: 10.1002/cpe.988

Author Information

  1. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 115A Campbell Hall, 1300 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294-1170, U.S.A.

*Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 115A Campbell Hall, 1300 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294-1170, U.S.A.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 19 JUL 2006
  2. Article first published online: 13 DEC 2005
  3. Manuscript Accepted: 27 APR 2005
  4. Manuscript Revised: 15 MAR 2005
  5. Manuscript Received: 2 JUN 2004

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Keywords:

  • workflow management system;
  • Grid computing;
  • Grid workflow system;
  • Petri-net model

Abstract

Advances in computer technologies have enabled scientists to explore research issues in their respective domains at scales greater and finer than ever before. The availability of efficient data collection and analysis tools presents researchers with vast opportunities to process heterogeneous data within a distributed environment. To support the opportunities enabled by massive computation, a suitable scientific workflow system is needed to help the users to manage data and programs, and to design reusable procedures of scientific experimental tasks. In this paper, the design and prototype implementation of a scientific workflow infrastructure, called Grid-Flow, is presented. Grid-Flow assists researchers in specifying scientific experiments using a Petri-net-based interface. The Grid-Flow infrastructure is designed as a Service Oriented Architecture with multi-layer component models. The contributions of Grid-Flow are as follows: (1) a new, lightweight, programmable Grid workflow language, Grid-Flow Description Language, is provided to describe the workflow process in a Grid environment; (2) a Petri-net-based user interface, based on the Generic Modeling Environment, is demonstrated to help the user design the workflow process with a Petri-net model; and (3) a program integration component of the Grid-Flow system is presented to integrate all possible programs into the system. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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