Hi. This is a great news for us. Currently we are porting our software (Cytoscape) to OSGi + Spring-DM framework:
http://www.cytoscape.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Cytoscape_3.0/Developer and if Taverna uses the same framework, it makes everything much easier. One of our future plan is more sophisticated integration of web services, including workflow support. We do not want to develop everything from scratch, so we want to integrate it into our system. However, since there are some overlap between Raven and OSGi based package manager (we use custom version of Equinox P2), we do not know how to handle this problem for now. But if both projects uses OSGi+Spring DM, integration is much simpler. Thanks. Kei (Cytoscape Core Developer Team) 2009/5/29 Stian Soiland-Reyes <[email protected]>: > Hi! > > Taverna 2.x and the Taverna Platform (the API on which the Taverna > Server is based) are currently two separate pieces of software. > > The Taverna Platform [1] is a branch of the code-base of the workflow > engine (t2core), which has not yet been integrated into the Taverna > Workbench 2.x (the graphical interface for designing and running > workflows). The main reason for this has been that we wanted to mature > the Platform and try it in other projects before committing to use it > from the Workbench. > > The primary motivation for building the Taverna Platform was to make it > easier to use Taverna code from other software, and to make it easier to > extend Taverna. Additionally we wanted to solve some of the issues we > and third party developers have had with classloaders and our plugin > system Raven. Raven has been used by Taverna since Taverna 1.5 up to and > including 2.0. > > The platform replaces the old Raven system (which was very closely > related to Maven) with a new plugin-based solution (Raven 2) which makes > the classloaders behave more like in a normal Java program, while > keeping the separation between individual plugins. This means that in > the Platform it would not be a problem if different activity/service > implementations co-exists and depend on different/conflicting versions > of dependencies such as Axis or JAXB. There are however industry > standard ways to do this. > > As part of the Platform work, some of the APIs of the core workflow > libraries had to be modified. As the platform is a fair amount of new > work, introduces a new plugin/discovery system, and in addition had some > unfinished pieces (such as activity implementations), we could not yet > commit to moving the Taverna workbench to use the Taverna platform. > > After the release of Taverna workbench 2.0 important additional work for > the graphical user interface was identified. We therefore started the > user interface-centric work towards the upcoming Taverna workbench 2.1, > but based on the pre-platform branch of t2core and Raven, which are > largely unchanged since Taverna 2.0. > > The main new features of the 2.1 workbench will be GUI enhancements for > service discovery, workflow editing, workflow invocation, reduced memory > footprint (supporting larger data values) and support for > provenance/intermediate values. Taverna Workbench 2.1 Beta 1 release is > imminent. > > We have now had time to evaluate the Platform in projects and done a > review of the codebase. One of these projects using the Platform is the > Taverna Server, which allows remote execution of Taverna 2 workflows > through a RESTful interface (in the same way as the Taverna Remote > Execution Service did for Taverna 1). A beta version of Taverna Server > will be released in June, and is currently used by the Shared Genomics > project. > > This upcoming Taverna Server is built upon the second beta version of > the platform (p0.1b2) , which we will also release during this summer. > The work remaining for doing this release of the Platform is mainly to > update the documentation, examples, JavaDocs and Maven archetypes to use > the new versions. This version of the platform completes support for > activity types like BioMoby, Soaplab and nested workflows. > > The platform has also successfully been used by a student to build a > prototype portlet for executing workflows. > > Based upon this combined experience, we are planning to continue > maintaining the majority of the Platform, e.g. the Platform API, > although some minor modification might become necessary for later > versions, such as for plugin definitions. > > We have however identified that some of the back-end components of the > Platform would require extensive future maintenance from the project > team. Our main goal is to continue to provide Taverna as a top class > workflow environment, and we can't really justify spending too much > developer time on maintaining bespoke code for which industry standard > efforts could be used. > > An example of this is the Raven 2 plugin system which could be replaced > by a standard system that would thus be less onerous to support. This > approach would also offer a better sustainability path for the project. > > Thus the long-term plan if for us to replace the Platform Plugin system > (Raven 2) with Spring Dynamic Modules [2] which uses OSGi [3] (which is > used famously in Eclipse [4]). > > We have not yet decided on which OSGi implementation we will go for, but > they do seem to be quite interchangeable (Eclipse Equinox, Knopflerfish, > Apache Felix). Moving to OSGi would require additional modifications to > the core and the workbench. > > This change to the Platform vs. using Raven 2 would take additional time > and may impact plugin providers who are using the current Platform > system, but we think that in the long run from a support and compliance > perspective this is the right decision for the project. > > Your comments on this strategy are most appreciated and expected. > > Best Regards, > The myGrid Taverna Team. > > > > > [1] http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/developer-information/taverna-platform/ > [2] http://www.springsource.org/osgi > [3] http://www.osgi.org/ > [4] http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/ > > > -- > Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team > School of Computer Science > The University of Manchester > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT > is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet > the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & > iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian > Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com > _______________________________________________ > taverna-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > Web site: http://www.taverna.org.uk > Mailing lists: http://www.taverna.org.uk/taverna-mailing-lists/ > Developers Guide: http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/developer-information > -- Keiichiro Ono [email protected] Cytoscape Core Developer Team: http://www.cytoscape.org/ UCSD Bioengineering Ideker Lab: http://chianti.ucsd.edu/idekerlab/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com _______________________________________________ taverna-hackers mailing list [email protected] Web site: http://www.taverna.org.uk Mailing lists: http://www.taverna.org.uk/taverna-mailing-lists/ Developers Guide: http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/developer-information
