Towards an ontology-based generic pipeline editor

Abstract

The pipeline concept is widely used in computer science to represent non-sequential computations, from scientific workflows to streaming transformation languages. While pipelines stand out as a highly visual representation of computation, several pipeline languages lack visual editors of production quality. We propose a method by which a generic pipeline editor can be built, centralizing the features needed to maintain and edit different pipeline languages. To foster adoption, especially in less programming-savvy communities, the proposed visual editor will be web-based. An ontology-based approach is adopted for the description of both the general features of the pipelines and the specific languages to be supported. Concepts, properties and constraints are defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), providing grounding in existing standards and extensibility. The work also leverages existing ontologies defined for scientific worlkflows.