The members of the Kepler project announce the release of the first beta version of Kepler. Kepler is an application for designing, executing and sharing scientific analyses and models as scientific workflows. This first beta release of Kepler includes access to ecological, biodiversity, environmental, and geological data via the EcoGrid, smart search to locate analytical components of interest, support for the R and Matlab statistical packages, support for executing remote web services and grid services as workflow components, support for sharing custom components with other users in the Kepler Component Library, and a wide variety of analysis and modeling tools.
The release can be downloaded from the Kepler web site: http://kepler-project.org We appreciate any comments, feedback, reports of bugs, and feature requests you might have. Kepler is moving towards a 1.0.0 release later this year, and this beta release is a major milestone. It represents a point in the Kepler development where we have most of the desired features for 1.0.0 implemented, and the application has stabilized. Over the coming months Kepler members will be focusing on fixing any bugs that have arisen, improving performance in several key areas, and improving the end user documentation. Look for these improvements in the release coming later this year. Kepler is an open source project, and we welcome participation and contributions. Current contributors include individuals from different projects and scientific disciplines. Contributing projects include the Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge (SEEK), the Scientific Data Management Center (SDM), the Geosciences Network (GEON), the ROADNet project, the Resurgence project, the CIPRes project, the Ptolemy project, and others. Matt Jones, on behalf of the Kepler project members -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Matt Jones jones at nceas.ucsb.edu National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) UC Santa Barbara http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under awards 0225676 for SEEK, 0225673 (AWSFL008-DS3) for GEON and OCE-0121726 for ROADNet, and by the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FC02-01ER25486 for SciDAC/SDM, and by DARPA under Contract No. F33615-00-C-1703 for Ptolemy, and by the the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N00014-98-1-0772 for ROADNet. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).