JDK 6 scripting plugin for Taverna

Google Summer of Code 2009 ideas

Primary Mentor: Ian Dunlop (Ian Dunlop)
Secondary Mentor: Stian Soiland-Reyes
OMII Project: http://www.mygrid.org.uk.

Background

Taverna 2 was developed using Java 5 since we have to support platforms which cannot currently move to Java 6 (eg, power pc and Intel Core Macs). However, JDK 6 has a lot of new features which could bring more power to workflow creation. One of these is the Java Scripting API which allows scripting languages to be processed natively by Java (similar to the existing Beanshell activity). This would allow users to re-use scripts which they have already written instead of having to rewrite them with the current activities.

Student aim

Develop a JDK6 scripting plugin using the Taverna 2 codebase

Project aim

Develop a JDK 6 based plugin scripting activity to allow the re-use of users existing scripts in the many scripting languages available (eg, Python, Javascript)

Skillset

Java, SVN, Maven