科学工作流系统是由一系列经过特殊设计的数据分析与管理步骤组成的、按照一定的逻辑组织在一起,并在给定的运行环境下,完成特定科学研究的工作流管理系统。科学工作流系统致力于使全世界的科学家可以在一个简单易用的平台上交换思想,共同设计全球尺度的实验,共享数据、实验步骤与结果等。每一个科学家可以独立创建自己的工作流,执行工作流并实时查看结果;不同科学家之间也可以方便地共享和复用这些工作流。本文以开普勒系统(Kepler system)和生物多样性虚拟实验室(BioVeL)两个项目为例,介绍了科学工作流的发展历史、背景、现有项目和应用等。以生态位模型工作流为例,介绍了科学工作流的流程以及特点等。并通过对现有科学工作流的分析,对其发展方向和存在的问题提出了自己的看法及预期。
A scientific workflow system is designed specifically to organize,manage and execute a series of research steps,or a workflow,in a given runtime environment.The vision for scientific workflow systems is that the scientists around the world can collaborate on designing global-scaled experiments,sharing the data sets,experimental processes,and results on an easy-to-use platform.Each scientist can create and execute their own workflows and view results in real-time,and then subsequently share and reuse workflows among other scientists.Two case studies,using the Kepler system and BioVeL,are introduced in this paper.Ecological niche modeling process,which is a specialized form of scientific workflow system included in both Kepler system and BioVeL,was used to describe and discuss the features,developmental trends,and problems of scientific workflows.