BIS-Grid Workflow Engine

Overview

The BIS-Grid workflow engine is a set of service extensions to the UNICORE Grid middleware that allows WSRF compliant Grid services to support workflow execution in Service Grids based on the WS-BPEL standard. The service extensions enable UNICORE to act as a proxyfor a standard WS-BPEL workflow engine in the backend, making WS-BPEL workflows accessible via hot-deployed WSRF interface services. The key features of the engine do not only comprise workflow execution support for Grids, but also strong authentication and authorization mechanisms based on X.509 certificates, credential delegation, and SAML and XACML support.

Although originally developed for the integration of business information systems in Grid environments, the BIS-Grid workflow engine is also suited for the execution of Scientific Workflows. The BIS-Grid workflow engine currently support the WS-BPEL engines ActiveBPEL and the SUN BPEL Engine, and can easily be extended to support additional WS-BPEL engines by a simple adapter concept. More information can be found here and here.

This work is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant No. 01IG07005 as part of the D-Grid initiative.

Download

The BIS-Grid workflow engine can be downloaded
from SourceForge

In the SourceForge site you will also find a
Sun Virtual Box Image with an already installed and configured BIS-Grid workflow engine and appropriate documentation for quick evaluation

Documentation

You will find all information of the BIS-Grid workflow engine on the following sites:

Extensive information of the BIS-Grid workflow engine including, for example, an architecture overview, tutorials for installation and configuration, and a user help

A demonstration video of the Sun Virtual Box Image

All public documents and deliverables of the BIS-Grid projects, including published scientific papers and the specification and documentation of the BIS-Grid workflow engine

Developer Contacts

You will find all information of the BIS-Grid workflow engine on the following sites:

André Höing, andre.hoeing@tu-berlin.de (Technische Universität Berlin)

Guido Scherp, guido.scherp@offis.de (OFFIS)

Stefan Gudenkauf, stefan.gudenkauf@offis.de (OFFIS)

Status

The BIS-Grid workflow engine service extensions are tested under UNICORE 6.3.0 and currently include a standard adapter for the WS-BPEL workflow engine ActiveBPEL 5.0.2. Additional WS-BPEL-based workflow engines can be supported easily by implementing additional adapters, for example, for the SUN BPEL engine (see Deliverable 3.4).