1st International Workshop on
Workflow systems in e-Science

(WSES 06)

in conjunction with

International Conference on Computational Science 2006

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

http://www.iccs-meeting.org/iccs2006)

May 28-31, 2006, University of Reading, UK

 (CFPPDF | CFPTXT | Accepted Paper | Program | Report | Special issue)

 

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.

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 in PDF format to (zhiming@science.uva.nl). 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 2 December 17, 2005 Full paper due
  • January 31, 2006 Notification
  • February 10, 2006 Camera-ready paper due

Programme committee

  • Marian Bubak (AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland).
  • Rajkumar Buyya (The University of Melbourne, Australia).
  • Ewa Deelman (University of Southern California, USA).
  • Thomas Fahringer (University of Innsbruck, Austria).
  • Bob Hertzberger(University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
  • Minglu Li (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China).
  • Ling Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA).
  • Peter Rice (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK).
  • Ian Taylor (Cardiff University, UK).
  • Zhiwei Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China).

 

Accepted papers

Oral presentations

Short oral presentations

1.      (658), M. Babik, Semantic Tools for Workflow Construction;

2.      (1009), Y. Xia, Stochastic modelling and quality evaluation of workflow systems based on QWF-nets;

3.      (1015), J. Zhang, Automatic Transformation from Geospatial Conceptual Workflow to Executable Workflow Using GRASS GIS Command Line Modules in Kepler;

4.      (1016), J. Cao, A Distributed Re-Configurable Grid Workflow Engine;

5.      (1017), E. Jaeger-Frank, A Three Tier Architecture for LiDAR Interpolation and Analysis;

6.      (1021), A. Paventhan, Workflows for Wind Tunnel Grid Applications;

7.      (1022), A. McGough, Adding Instruments and Workflow support to existing Grid Architectures;

8.      (1023), J. Blower, Styx Grid Services: Lightweight, easy-to-use middleware for scientific workflows;

9.      (1025), A. McGough Workflow deployment in ICENI II;

1.      (509), W. Zhang, Automatic Services Composition in the Grid Environments;

2.      (702), A. Lastovetsky A Non-Intrusive and Incremental Approach to Enabling Direct Communications in RPC-based Grid Programming Systems;

3.      (982), L. Czekierda Applying Workflow to Experiment Control in Virtual Laboratory;

4.      (1013), I. Navas-Delgado Distributed Execution of Workflows in the INB;

5.      (1019), P. Czarnul, Integration of Compute-Intensive Tasks into Scientific Workflows in BeesyCluster;

6.      (1020), S. Lee, Agent-based Middleware Architecture for Workflow in Grid Portals;

7.      (1030), K. Gaaloul, Cooperative Processes For Scientific Work;

8.      (1122), E. Merelli, Enacting proactive workflows engine in e-Science;

 

Program

Find your paper in the program.

 

 

Workshop report

The first international workshop on Workflow Systems in e-Science (WSES 2006) was successfully held in the context of International Conference of Computational Science 2006 in Reading University in May 29 2006. WSES aimed 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. WSES focused 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 was organized by Zhiming Zhao and Adam Belloum from University of Amsterdam. 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. Zhao, Belloum and Altintas chaired these sessions respectively. Three speakers were absent and more than 20 researchers attended the workshop.

 

The first session, chaired by Zhao, had six papers:

Altintas presented the first two papers; she discussed how Kepler was used in integrating GIS packages for geospatial modelling, and in coupling distributed computing processes and a GEON portal. She demonstrated the flexibility of using Kepler in wrapping command line based software resources and in controlling backend computing processes.

Paventhan presented the third paper; he discussed the development and implementation of a wind tunnel grid system workflow using .NET-based CoG Toolkit and Globus grid services.

Afterwards, three short papers were presented. Navas-Delgado presented how reusable services in a workflow system were used to facilitate the rapid prototyping of scientific experiments, Czekierda discussed workflow issues in a distributed scientific experiment management environment called Virtual Laboratory, and Kaczmarek discussed work on integrating compute-intensive tasks into scientific workflow in BessyCluster.

 

The second session, chaired by Belloum, had five papers:

The presenter of the first paper was absent.

The second and third papers reported research conducted in the project of ICENI II. Colling discussed how the high level services ICENI II environment added on-top of existing Grid architectures for supporting workflows involves different experiment instruments. McGough focused on the workflow deployment issues between different levels of abstraction in ICENI II.

Harrson presented a regular paper on handling data in scientific workflows using a light weight service called Styx.

Lee presented a short paper on using agent technology in developing workflow middleware and in coordinating workflows and a Grid portal.

 

The third session, chaired by Altinas, had three papers:

The first paper was presented by Hluchy; he discussed tools developed in the project of K-WfGrid for supporting semantic level workflow composition. Zuo and Merelli presented two short papers on optimising Grid computing processes via net solver, and on enacting workflows in an e-Science environment.

 

BOF discussion session:

Since three speakers were absent, a BOF discussion session which was originally scheduled at the second day was shifted to the end of the first day. In the discussion session, Altinas first presented a list of challenge issues in scientific workflow systems. Industrial standards in scientific workflows, and different levels of user support in workflows were extensively discussed. Thanks Altinas for making notes.

 

After the workshop, a special issue for the workshop is being proposed. The CFP for the special issue will come soon.

 

 

CFP of the special issue: SPECIAL ISSUE FOR WORKS06 and WSES2006

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Scientific Programming journal announces a forthcoming special issue for the Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science 2006 and the 1st International Workshop on workflow systems in e-Science to be published in December 2006.

 
Scientific Programming provides a meeting ground for research results in, and practical experience with, software engineering environments, tools, languages, and models of computation aimed specifically at supporting scientific and engineering computing. Scientific Programming brings together in one place developments that are found in a wide variety of journals, conference proceedings and informal society journals. Scientific Programming publishes papers on language, compiler and programming environment issues for scientific computing. Of particular interest are contributions to programming and software engineering for grid computing, high performance computing, processing very large data sets, supercomputing, visualization and parallel computing. 
 
As the author of papers submitted to WORKS06 and WSES 2006, you are invited to submit your UPDATED version of the paper on the both workshop proceedings to the Scientific Computing journal, 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

Guest Editors

Dr. Ewa Deelman (deelman@isi.edu)
SI/USC 




 
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001 




 
Marina Del Rey, CA 90092 




 
Tel: 310 448-8408 




 
Fax: 310 823-6714 




 
 
Dr. Zhiming Zhao (zhiming@science.uva.nl) 
Dr. Adam Belloum (adam@science.uva.nl) 
UvA
Kruislaan 403
1098SJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Tel: 31 20 5257599
Fax: 31 20 5257490
 

Author guideline

a.       Authors should follow the Scientific Programming manuscript format. An electronic copy of the manuscript, in Postscript or PDF format should be submitted via electronic mail to all these three emails: (deelman@isi.edu, zhiming@science.uva.nl, adam@science.uva.nl) by August 15th, 2006. Submission should include authors names, affiliations, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses on the cover page. Only original manuscripts, which have not been submitted elsewhere, will be considered for publication. All papers will be subject to a thorough peer review process. 

 
b.                         Submitted paper must be an updated version (at least 20% difference) of the one submitted to WORKS06 and WSES 2006. An update report, 5 KEYWORDS, together with the manuscript should be sent to all guest editors:
 
c.                         It is recommended that the paper does not exceed 12 printed pages. PDF files are preferred. Word files are acceptable, but Latex sources are required for the final version.
 
d.                         There is no the publishing fee. All authors will get a free PDF file of your paper, and then the authors can order the offprints.

Important Deadlines:

 
1.                         July 15, 2006: Abstract submission
2.                         August 15, 2006: Full paper submission 
3.                         September 5, 2006: Reviewing results reported to authors
4.                         September 25, 2006: 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

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