***SPAM*** Windows Workflow

AI-0614a: Steven Newhouse will check whether Windows Workflow can also be used with CCS / BES style services In under two days I was able to (from scratch) build some custom workflow activities to transfer files to/from a server over FTP and to use the HPCP web service to run a job on a cluster resource. This time also included gaining familiarity with the Visual Studio IDE, the Workflow builder components within that, oh and gaining familiarity with C#. From a developer perspective I'm obviously quite impressed! I did not really explore all of the different workflow activities that come provided (parallel, if/else, while, etc.) but the ones I did all seemed fairly straightforward to use. Its straightforward to give an activity properties and to specify these as customizations within a workflow. This allowed me to move a file from my workflow client to the HPC resource, to start a job on the resource, and to transfer back an output file. There are opportunities for simplifying this... e.g. parsing the JSDL file to extract out the transfer ins & outs. And to make the workflow more complex! There's a whole load of stuff on validation, hibernating/dehibernating running workflows, persistence, etc. that I did not explore. With a set of pre-defined configurable activities I see no reason why a technically competent person (not a programmer) could not use a preconfigured environment to build and run their own workflows. Steven PS: I am sure there are other equally excellent ways of doing this in other environments... my focus was on the Windows tooling.

Thanks Steven,
In under two days I was able to (from scratch) build some custom workflow activities to transfer files to/from a server over FTP and to use the HPCP web service to run a job on a cluster resource. This time also included gaining familiarity with the Visual Studio IDE, the Workflow builder components within that, oh and gaining familiarity with C#. From a developer perspective I’m obviously quite impressed!
Excellent! Can you explain your workflow at this Thursday's call or F2F meeting next week? Thanks, ---- Hiro Kishimoto -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [ogsa-wg] ***SPAM*** Windows Workflow From: Steven Newhouse <Steven.Newhouse@microsoft.com> To: ogsa-wg@ogf.org <ogsa-wg@ogf.org> Date: 2007/08/08 5:50
AI-0614a: Steven Newhouse will check whether Windows Workflow can also be used with CCS / BES style services
In under two days I was able to (from scratch) build some custom workflow activities to transfer files to/from a server over FTP and to use the HPCP web service to run a job on a cluster resource. This time also included gaining familiarity with the Visual Studio IDE, the Workflow builder components within that, oh and gaining familiarity with C#. From a developer perspective I’m obviously quite impressed!
I did not really explore all of the different workflow activities that come provided (parallel, if/else, while, etc.) but the ones I did all seemed fairly straightforward to use. Its straightforward to give an activity properties and to specify these as customizations within a workflow. This allowed me to move a file from my workflow client to the HPC resource, to start a job on the resource, and to transfer back an output file. There are opportunities for simplifying this… e.g. parsing the JSDL file to extract out the transfer ins & outs. And to make the workflow more complex!
There’s a whole load of stuff on validation, hibernating/dehibernating running workflows, persistence, etc. that I did not explore.
With a set of pre-defined configurable activities I see no reason why a technically competent person (not a programmer) could not use a preconfigured environment to build and run their own workflows.
Steven
PS: I am sure there are other equally excellent ways of doing this in other environments… my focus was on the Windows tooling.
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participants (2)
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Hiro Kishimoto
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Steven Newhouse