Gridbus Workfl ow Enactment Engine

Abstract

With the advent of Grid technologies, scientists and engineers are building complex and sophisticated applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed Grid resources [33]. Building complex workflows requires means for composing and executing distributed applications. A workflow expresses an automation of procedures wherein files and data are passed between procedures applications according to a defined set of rules, to achieve an overall goal [13]. A workflow management system defines, manages and executes workflows on computing resources. The use of the workflow paradigm for application composition on Grids offers several advantages [22] such as: • Ability to build dynamic applications and orchestrate the use of distributed resources. • Utilization of resources that are located in a suitable domain to increase throughput or reduce execution costs. • Execution spanning multiple administrative domains to obtain specific processing capabilities. • Integration of multiple teams involved in managing different parts of the experiment workflow – thus promoting inter-organizational collaborations.