Kepler scientific workflow system
| Stable release |
2.5 / 2015-10-28
|
|---|---|
| Written in | Java |
| Operating system | Linux, Mac OS X, Windows |
| Type | Workflow Management System |
| License | BSD License |
| Website | kepler-project.org |
Kepler is a free software system for designing, executing, reusing, evolving, archiving, and sharing scientific workflows. Kepler's facilities provide process and data monitoring, provenance information, and high-speed data movement. Workflows in general, and scientific workflows in particular, are directed graphs where the nodes represent discrete computational components, and the edges represent paths along which data and results can flow between components. In Kepler, the nodes are called 'Actors' and the edges are called 'channels'. Kepler includes a graphical user interface for composing workflows in a desktop environment, a runtime engine for executing workflows within the GUI and independently from a command-line, and a distributed computing option that allows workflow tasks to be distributed among compute nodes in a computer cluster or computing grid. The Kepler system principally targets the use of a workflow metaphor for organizing computational tasks that are directed towards particular scientific analysis and modeling goals. Thus, Kepler scientific workflows generally model the flow of data from one step to another in a series of computations that achieve some scientific goal.
A scientific workflow is the process of combining data and processes into a configurable, structured set of steps that implement semi-automated computational solutions to a scientific problem. Scientific workflow systems often provide graphical user interfaces to combine different technologies along with efficient methods for using them, and thus increase the efficiency of the scientists.
Kepler provides direct access to scientific data that has been archived in many of the commonly used data archives. For example, Kepler provides access to data stored in the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) Metacat server and described using Ecological Metadata Language. Additional data sources that are supported include data accessible using the DiGIR protocol, the OPeNDAP protocol, GridFTP, JDBC, SRB, and others.
Kepler differs from many of the other bioinformatics workflow management systems in that it separates the structure of the workflow model from its model of computation, such that different models for the computation of the workflow can be bound to a given workflow graph. Kepler inherits several common models of computation from the Ptolemy system, including Synchronous Data Flow (SDF), Continuous Time (CT), Process Network (PN), and Dynamic Data Flow (DDF), among others.
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