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Taverna 2.0 beta is released

The first beta version of the Taverna 2 Workflow Workbench was released this August, in preparation for the full release later in the year. Taverna 2 includes a totally rewritten user interface and enactment engine with greatly increased potential for user-configuration.

The new Taverna 2 enactor improves the performance in speed and memory usage over the original. For example, it can now support data streaming and passing data by reference. This improves the processing efficiency of large data and longer-running workflows by speeding up iterations and reducing network traffic respectively. Also, users can now call secure services in their workflows. If a service requires security clearance, then it is configured to be run using information held by the user's security credential manager. Error handling and propagation have also been improved. In Taverna 1, if a single error occurred during iteration over a data set, the results of the entire iteration were lost. In Taverna 2, outputs for all the calls that worked correctly are produced, along with information about any errors. These are then propagated through the workflow for downstream activities to process. This means that a single piece of erroneous data no longer prevents the generation of results for the correct data. It also makes it easier to track errors to their source.

Another important improvement in Taverna 2 is the user interface. Workflows are now designed with a user-friendly, drag-and-drop graphical editor. This allows activities to be configured by simply clicking on them in the editor. In a similar fashion, activities are connected by clicking on the ports that need to be connected. Correcting mistakes has been made easier, because all of the editing operations can now be undone and redone. Similarly, the activity palette has also been redesigned so that users can configure their views of available resources.

Further beta releases, and the full release, of Taverna 2.0 will occur later this year.

www.mygrid.org.uk

OMII-UK hits the BBC’s airwaves

Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK's Director, appeared on the BBC's Digital Planet programme on the 28th July.

Neil was interviewed by Gareth Mitchell to discover his thoughts on the development and economics of open-source software. Digital Planet is broadcast on the BBC World Service and is described as ‘the digital world and what it means for us all’.

We are currently discussing copyright issues with the BBC, and hope to make the podcast of Neil’s radio debut publicly available. Keep an eye on the OMII-UK website for updates.

ICT collaboration to benefit GridSAM

OMII-UK is currently hosting two developers from the Institute of Computing Technologies (ICT), Beijing—part of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. The developers will work with OMII-UK and Imperial College for three months. During that time, they will help integrate enhancements to GridSAM that were developed at ICT.

This collaboration will lead to GridSAM support for more resource managers, e.g. PBS, and will further enhance GridSAM’s stability, performance and robustness.

www.tinyurl.com/6fmfbh

International Summer School

This year's Sixth International Summer School in Grid Computing (ISSGC) migrated South from last year's venue in Stockholm to Balatonfüed, in Hungary, by the beautiful shores of lake Balaton. Forty-five students from all over the world attended this year's school. Tuition was provided by members from key grid technology providers, such as Condor, Globus, gLite, Unicore and OGSA-DAI, who gave the students an overview of their particular applications and infrastructures. In short, the ISSGC gives you the best training, straight from the horse's mouth!

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of material to cover in the two-week period over which the school runs. The days were long, starting just before nine in the morning and ending at seven-thirty in the evening. Despite the gruelling schedule, the students displayed great enthusiasm, absorbing all the information they were provided with. It wasn’t all book learning. Many a practical exercise was undertaken, using the EGEE Gilda infrastructure, which allowed the students to apply their new knowledge. It’s not just a one way process: technology developers get to see how their technology is applied in the field, which has already led to many improvements being made to the middlewares taught at the summer school.

Sadly, this was Malcolm Atkinson’s final ISSGC as Programme Committee chair (although we’re sure that Malcolm will still be actively involved in some capacity next year). So, if you, or one of your students, have a free summer and want to get a hands-on introduction to Grid computing, then look no further than next year's ISSGC.

www.tinyurl.com/6daw6f