Workflow composition through design suggestions using design-time provenance information

Abstract

With the increasing complexity of the Grid based application workflows, the workflow design process is also getting more and more complex. Many workflow design tools provide mechanism to ease the workflow design process and to make the life easier for a workflow designer. In this paper, we present a provenance based workflow design suggestion system for quick and easy creation of the error-free workflows. In our approach, the provenance system intercepts the users' actions, processes, stores these actions in the provenance store and provides suggestions about possible subsequent actions for the workflow design. These suggested actions are based on the current user actions and are calculated using the provenance information available in the provenance store. These design suggestions partially automate the design process providing ease of use, reliability and correctness during the workflow design process. Creating error-free workflows is of pivotal importance in distributed execution environments. Increasing complexity in the designing of these complex workflows is making the design process more error prone and tedious. Taking into account the significance of correctness of the Grid based workflow and realizing the importance of the design-time in the life of a workflow based application, we present a novel approach of using recorded provenance information. © 2009 IEEE.