Taverna: a tool for the composition and enactment of bioinformatics workflows

  • Authors:

  • Tom Oinn;Matthew Addis;Justin Ferris;Darren Marvin;Martin Senger;Mark Greenwood;Tim Carver;Kevin Glover;Matthew R. Pocock;Anil Wipat;Peter Li

  • Affiliations:

  • EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK,;IT Innovation Centre, University of Southampton, SO16 7NP, UK,;IT Innovation Centre, University of Southampton, SO16 7NP, UK,;IT Innovation Centre, University of Southampton, SO16 7NP, UK,;EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK,;Department of Computing Science, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK,;MRC Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SB, UK,;School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK;School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK;School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK;School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK

  • Venue:
  • Bioinformatics
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Motivation:In silico experiments in bioinformatics involve the co-ordinated use of computational tools and information repositories. A growing number of these resources are being made available with programmatic access in the form of Web services. Bioinformatics scientists will need to orchestrate these Web services in workflows as part of their analyses. Results: The Taverna project has developed a tool for the composition and enactment of bioinformatics workflows for the life sciences community. The tool includes a workbench application which provides a graphical user interface for the composition of workflows. These workflows are written in a new language called the simple conceptual unified flow language (Scufl), where by each step within a workflow represents one atomic task. Two examples are used to illustrate the ease by which in silico experiments can be represented as Scufl workflows using the workbench application. Availability: The Taverna workflow system is available as open source and can be downloaded with example Scufl workflows from http://taverna.sourceforge.net