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Scientific Workflows

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 1073 Accesses

Synonyms

In silico experiment; Grid workflow

Definition

A scientific workflow is the description of a process for accomplishing a scientific objective, usually expressed in terms of tasks and their dependencies. Typically, scientific workflow tasks are computational steps for scientific simulations or data analysis steps. Common elements or stages in scientific workflows are acquisition, integration, reduction, visualization, and publication (e.g., in a shared database) of scientific data. The tasks of a scientific workflow are organized (at design time) and orchestrated (at runtime) according to dataflow and possibly other dependencies as specified by the workflow designer. Workflows can be designed visually, e.g., using block diagrams, or textually using a domain-specific language.

Historical Background

Workflows have a long history in the database community and in business process modeling, in which case they are sometimes called business workflowsto distinguish them from...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Bertram Ludäscher, Shawn Bowers & Timothy McPhillips

Authors
  1. Bertram Ludäscher
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  2. Shawn Bowers
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  3. Timothy McPhillips
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Ludäscher, B., Bowers, S., McPhillips, T. (2009). Scientific Workflows. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1471

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