Scientific Process Automation and Workflow Management

This paper introduces and describes scientific workflows, i.e., executable descriptions of automatable scientific processes such as computational science simulations and data analyses. Scientific workflows are often expressed in terms of tasks and their (Dataflow) dependencies. This paper first provides an overview of the characteristic features of scientific workflows and outlines their life cycle. A detailed case study highlights workflow challenges and solutions in simulation management. The authors then provide a brief overview of how some concrete systems support the various phases of the workflow life cycle, i.e., design, resource management, execution, and provenance management. The authors conclude with a discussion on community based workflow sharing.