Bio-workflows with BizTalk: using a commercial workflow engine for eScience

摘要

Workflow is an important enabling technology for eScience. Research into workflow systems for eScience has yielded several specialized workflow engines. In this paper we investigate the nature of scientific workflow and describe how an existing business workflow engine, Microsoft's BizTalk, can be adapted to support scientific workflow, and some advantages of doing this. We demonstrate how BizTalk is able to support scientific workflow through the implementation of two real bioinformatics workflows. These workflows are enacted through a novel Web based interface making them widely accessible.