DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Model-Based Workflows Leonardo Salayandía University of Texas at El Paso

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Overview Context –Cyberinfrastructure for scientific domains –SOAs, service composition, and workflows A Domain-Specific Modeling approach –The model: Workflow Driven Ontologies (WDOs) –The DSL: Model-Based Workflows (MBWs) Status

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Context Cyberinfrastructure for the Geosciences (GEON) –Nation-wide NSF-funded project –Scientist collaborators Creating ontologies to describe scientific domains –IT collaborators Creating distributed resources across geosciences domains in the form of services (SOA) Creating workflows to compose services into scientific applications The DSM challenge –Bridging the gap between ontologies and workflow creation

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Ontologies Scientists create the Domain Specific Model –OWL – Ontology Web Language (W3C) –Workflow Driven Ontologies (WDOs) Define a context for scientists to create ontologies that are amenable to workflow generation –WDO creation software Brainstorming phase to define information and method concepts Relationship elicitation phase to define input/output relationships between information and methods concepts

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Workflows IT professionals and scientists create workflows from services –Workflow languages not targeted for scientists OWL-S (Semantic Web), MoML (Ptolemy II, Kepler) –Kepler Scientific Workflow Management System Graphical abstraction of workflow language (MoML) Closer to being used by scientists, but not there yet

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 OWL-S example

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Kepler Workflow example

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Model Based Workflows Contains terms defined by the scientist (not computer science terms) Data types defined based on the scientist’s terms Abstract level of specification –Not an executable DSL –Scientist can be sloppy about workflow specification, ex. partial orders –Scientists can understand the workflows, validate, and give feedback to the Workflow Driven Ontology

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Model Based Workflows Simple constructs for workflow specification –Sequence –Partial Order with sets –Ex. Method 1 Method3 → Output Method 2 MBW metamodel as an OWL ontology MBW generator software –Extract MBW specifications automatically from domain knowledge represented in a WDO

DSM Workshop, October 22 OOPSLA 2006 Current Status Developing and using WDO-Assistant prototype tool to create WDOs –Collaborating with scientists to evaluate the tool Geophysics Seismology Environmental Sciences (Biology) Volcanology Developing MBW-Generator software to extract MBW specs from WDOs –XML output –Creating a graphical representation for it Considering producing MoML and using Kepler’s graphical representation Need to refine the workflow into an executable specification