1. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Workflow Application Fenglian Xu 07/05/03

2. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Overview  Problems  Why do we need workflow?  Solution  How do we solve the problem?  Architecture of the workflow.  Demo  Future Work

3. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Workflow Problem in Geodise  Design optimisation and search is a long and repetitive process oBegin with a problem definition geometry. oGenerate a mesh & use CFD to find the value of the objective function. oRun the solver repeatedly to find an improved design.  Dynamic and complicated processes oDifferent problems sets. oDifferent solvers. oSame problem definition can have different objectives, constraints, variables. oVarious objectives, constraints, variables etc  Script languages often used by experts to construct a workflow oUsers have to manually edit the script with full knowledge of design optimisation and search.

4. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Solution  How does Workflow fit in Geodise? oMapping – reveal and record Matlab functions for problems and solvers within Geodise oModelling – Internal processes are application-to-application oManaging – enable management and re-use of workflows

5. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Solution  Business processes components oExecutable tasks – Matlab functions oDataflow – passes from one task to another task oControl flow – decides if the dataflow is passed in sequence or in parallel  Enactment engine oMatlab host environment  Business Process Executable Language For Matlab(BPEL4Matlab) o.M file created by a tool. oNot XML format of XLANG, WSFL, BPEL4WS, XPDL etc.

6. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Architecture of workflow GUI

7. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Current Workflow Functions  Construct workflows oEnable users to drag and drop a task node into a workspace. oEnable users to make connections between task nodes. oEnable users to change values of the input parameters. oEnable users to configure the dataflow of a connection.  Submit job to enactment engine oSubmit a.m file as represent of a workflow to a remote host. oRun the job on the remote host. oStore intermediate results in a shared storage.  Visualise the results oMonitor feedback from the running job. oVisualise graphical output.

8. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org XML File …

9. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org XML File Geodise classifies all the library functions in a hierarchical structure and save them into an XML file – it can be done by ontology service. An example of the xml file is shown in slide 17. A function is defined by a function name, a list of inputs and a list of outputs. Each input or output node is defined by a type, a name and a default value

10. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Future Work- Workflow Editor Enhancement of GUI Features –Enable users to select an overloaded function –Add more flexible cell renders for non-primitive data type in the task property sheet –Enable a multiple selection in the connection configuration dialog –Enable to move a task node as well the linked connection node –Implement menu functions – save, load etc –Implement a job monitor –Enable a job to be run on either a local or a remote Matlab host environment –Enable a join and a fork control flow –Enable users to add their own functions into the tree structure –Enable variable of input parameters –May add a conditional node Integration with Knowledge –Enable users to load a project via knowledge advisor by a given keyword –Overloaded functions should be provided by knowledge –Provide advisor as necessarily while constructing a workflow

11. © Geodise Project, University of Southampton, 2003. http://www.geodise.org Thanks Thanks all for your attention! Email: F.Xu@soton.ac.uk