ABSTRACT
Information Standards................................................. 446 19.4.2 A Sampling of Workflow-Related Standards ............................. 446
19.5 Future Trends and Challenges................................................................... 447 19.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 447 References.............................................................................................................. 448
Petri Nets ........................................................................................................... 448 Workflows .......................................................................................................... 448 Workflow Patterns.............................................................................................. 448 Data-Mining Tools............................................................................................. 448 Open Source Tools ............................................................................................ 449 Standards-Related Publications ......................................................................... 449
Many practices in computational research environments are iterative in nature. A researcher might apply a series of operations to a dataset and then repeat this series a number of times, making slight modifications to the process on each occasion until some desired result is achieved. At a later date, the researcher might have new data for which the initial process has to be repeated. Automation of the whole process offers the significant advantage of reducing inconsistencies and errors, and the time savings are obvious. It is for this type of use that researchers increasingly prefer using workflow or data-pipelining tools over traditional software applications. Although these latter applications allow for automation in some cases (e.g., through a scripting engine), this process is less flexible and requires special expertise.
