Semantically-aided data-aware service workflow composition

Abstract

Composition of workflows of computational tasks, grid jobs, or even web services is not a new topic. Many papers and research projects have tackled this problem in the past, in recent years also using semantic description of resources. Most of the proposed or developed solutions deal only with the composition of the functional part of the workflow, the data necessary to actually execute it is considered secondary. The system, design of which we describe in this paper, tries to overcome this gap, and create workflows with the input data of the workflow actions already included. Our design is based on an existing solution from the project K-Wf Grid. The workflow is modeled as a Petri net, which allows for easy incorporation of data into the process. It utilizes semantic description of resources by means of ontologies, and operates on a SOA-based grid composed of web services. It is being developed in the context of a project called SEMCO-WS1. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.