Title
Software architectures to integrate workflow engines in science gateways.
Abstract
Science gateways often rely on workflow engines to execute applications on distributed infrastructures. We investigate six software architectures commonly used to integrate workflow engines into science gateways. In tight integration, the workflow engine shares software components with the science gateway. In service invocation, the engine is isolated and invoked through a specific software interface. In task encapsulation, the engine is wrapped as a computing task executed on the infrastructure. In the pool model, the engine is bundled in an agent that connects to a central pool to fetch and execute workflows. In nested workflows, the engine is integrated as a child process of another engine. In workflow conversion, the engine is integrated through workflow language conversion. We describe and evaluate these architectures with metrics for assessment of integration complexity, robustness, extensibility, scalability and functionality. Tight integration and task encapsulation are the easiest to integrate and the most robust. Extensibility is equivalent in most architectures. The pool model is the most scalable one and meta-workflows are only available in nested workflows and workflow conversion. These results provide insights for science gateway architects and developers.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1016/j.future.2017.01.005
Future Generation Computer Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Workflow engines,Science gateways,Software architectures
Child process,Workflow technology,Computer science,Windows Workflow Foundation,Real-time computing,Software,Component-based software engineering,Workflow engine,Workflow management system,Workflow,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
75
0167-739X
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.46
33
14