Hello all, I wanted to support Andrew's comments here. We are of course aware of the good work achieved on interoperability by WfMC. However, such an approach is aimed primarily at B2B interactions and their standards for interoperability were released around 9 years ago. If the subject was closed, then the eScience community would have adopted this approach and we would indeed have no need for further debate (and indeed, perhaps we should consider adopting these standards ...). However, this is generally not the case in eScience workflow and it would be very useful to have the community feedback on their experiences with WfMC or other. There are a number of interesting workflow projects around in the community and recently there has been activity in the area of workflow sharing (e.g. myExperiment and others) for the scientific workflow community rather than business community. Whether the WfMC B2B is relevant here it a matter for discussion. The aim of the questionnaire is is to get people motivated in discussing these issues, which we hope might lead to a research document that will include a review of relevant standards. We hope that many will take part in this discussion and we also hope that some might even contribute to the document :) Your help is appreciated. cheers, Ian On 21 Feb 2008, at 13:04, Andrew Harrison wrote:

The questionnaire is not suggesting that the issues are new. But they have not been solved in eScience, which is why they are worth addressing again.

As you will see from the background paragraph in the email, and on the web form, we are interested in solutions and approaches that may actually be adopted by existing workflow tools. We are also interested in feedback from the community as these people work with existing tools, and may not have input into such organizations as the WfMC.

Adrian Toth gave a presentation at the WFM-RG session at OGF20 which usefully described the WfMC approach. This represents just one approach which gravitates towards particular technologies that are not particularly supported by existing tools in eScience. We therefore consider it is worth eliciting opinions that may open up other avenues of thought.

We are also interested in generating discussion in this area, so it's obviously working.

cheers,

Andrew

On 21 Feb 2008, at 11:14, Jinjun Chen wrote:

...

Workflow interoperability and sharing are not a new topic. They have already been there since 1993 when WfMC was established. I would like to suggest that we pay more attention to what have been done by WfMC.

Best wishes, Jinjun

On 2/21/08, A S McGough wrote: Dear All,

I've been asked to circulate this on behalf of the WFM-RG. Please consider replying as this will hopefully feed into future OGSA as well as WFM-RG work.

steve..

Dear Researcher,

As part of the work of the OGF Workflow Management Research Group, we are gathering user scenarios and experiences on workflow interoperability and sharing, which we intend will lead into a research document. Andrew Harrison (group secretary) has created an on-line form to gather information for such a research group document, which can be found here:

http://bender.astro.cf.ac.uk/wfmrg/

We would appreciate your help in taking the time to answer these questions and provide us with your opinions on these topics. As a background:

There are a number of existing workflow tools and systems used by different projects in the eScience community. Many of these projects have a long history of activity and have, as a result, developed specialist knowledge in certain domains as well as particular capabilities that support the scenarios the project has been addressing. The relative maturity of these projects means that imposing standards which would disrupt their development or diminish the availability of their specialisms could be counter-productive. At OGF20 and OGF21, the Workflow Management Research Group (WFM-RG) focussed on gathering and disseminating workflow sharing and interoperability scenarios and requirements in an attempt to begin developing standards and mechanisms that allow diverse workflow systems to interoperate without undermining their individual strengths or development procedures. This document is a request for input into that process. It will not take long to complete. We would like to thank all those in advance who contribute.

All the best,

Ian and Ewa

Lecturer, School of Computer Science, Cardiff. Assistant Professor, Dept. Computer Science and CCT, LSU. www.cs.cf.ac.uk/user/I.J.Taylor/ & www.p2pgridbook.com Tel: +44-781110 3142

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School of Computer Science, Cardiff University, Queen's Buildings, Newport Road, Cardiff CF24 3AA, Wales, UK tel: 02920 879184 email: a.b.harrison@cs.cf.ac.uk

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Lecturer, School of Computer Science, Cardiff. Assistant Professor, Dept. Computer Science and CCT, LSU. www.cs.cf.ac.uk/user/I.J.Taylor/ & www.p2pgridbook.com Tel: +44-781110 3142