Author: brenninc
Date: Mon Mar 9 11:17:55 2015
New Revision: 1665187
URL: http://svn.apache.org/r1665187
Log:
index page
Added:
incubator/taverna/site/trunk/content/documentation/language/index.md
Added: incubator/taverna/site/trunk/content/documentation/language/index.md
URL:
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/incubator/taverna/site/trunk/content/documentation/language/index.md?rev=1665187&view=auto
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+Title: SCUFL2 Taverna Language
+Notice: Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+ or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
+ distributed with this work for additional information
+ regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
+ to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+ "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+ with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ .
+ http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ .
+ Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+ software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+ "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+ KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
+ specific language governing permissions and limitations
+ under the License.
+
+SCUFL2 is the new (since Taverna 3) mechanism for specifying Taverna
workflows.
+SCUFL2 defines a model, a workflow bundle file format (.wfbundle), and a Java
API for working with workflow structures.
+SCUFL2 is the workflow language for Taverna 3, and replaces Taverna 2's t2flow
format.
+
+##Summary
+
+SCUFL2 is the Taverna 3 mechanism for specifying Taverna workflows.
+SCUFL2 adopts Linked Data technology and preservation methodologies to create
a platform-independent workflow language
+ that can be inspected, modified, created and executed.
+
+SCUFL2 comes with a [Java API](/documentation/scufl2/api) that can be used for
programmatic access to read and write SCUFL2
+ [workflow bundles](/documentation/scufl2/bundle).
+A workflow bundle is a structured ZIP file with the workflow definitions
included as XML documents.
+Those workflow documents are described by an XML Schema and are also valid
RDF/XML.
+The XML Schema allows tools to read and write SCUFL2 workflow definitions as
regular structured XML.
+The RDF allows RDF-enabled tools to link workflow definitions with external
resources.
+
+The workflow structure is defined using an [OWL
ontology](/documentation/scufl2/ontology)
+ and annotated with URIs so that third parties can form semantic statements
about any component of a Scufl2 workflow,
+ for example to state that a particular service produces outputs of a
certain type,
+ or that a data link was added by a specific researcher.
+
+Semantic annotations and a manifest for the bundle declare the purpose of,
+ and links between the different components forming a workflow.
+This allows third parties to extract and append annotations about data and
services used by the workflow.
+
+##Motivation
+
+The t2flow serialization format suffers from being very close to the Java
object model,
+ and contains various items that are simply Java beans serialized using
*XMLBeans*.
+As the t2flow format is very verbose, it can be difficult to deal with for
third party software to do
+ **inspection** ("Which services does this workflow use?"), **modification**
+ ("Change all calls to *broken.com* to *fixed.com*") and **generation**
+ ("Build a custom workflow from a button").
+
+Developers have informed us that the old SCUFL format of Taverna 1 was
significantly easier to work with.
+However, this format also has its caveats, like no schema,
+ unidentified ways to extend service definitions for Taverna plugins and
+ not supporting various new features in the Taverna 2 engine.
+
+We have therefore decided to form a new serialisation format for workflows,
called **SCUFL2**.
+
+##Overview>
+
+SCUFL2 consists of:
+
+ - [SCUFL2 language](/documentation/scufl2/language)
+ - SCUFL2 [Workflow Bundle](/documentation/scufl2/bundle) format
+ - [SCUFL2 API](/documentation/scufl2/api) for Java
+
+
+
