SWBES08: Challenging Issues in Workflow Applications

Nowadays, scientific experiments often involve cooperation between large scale computing and data resources. Workflow management systems are emerging as a key element to help scientists to prototype and execute experiments processes and to accelerate the scientific discoveries from the experiment. Concerted research is carried out in several projects along the complete e-Science technology chain, ranging from applications to networking, focusing on new methodologies and re-usable components. A number of research groups worldwide are developing more and more advanced workflow features to support scientists to develop complex computing and data intensive application workflows using geographically distributed data and computing resources. Despite many successes, the gap between the workflow application developers and workflow system developers is still very big and it is still difficult for lots of potential application developers to fully utilize the features offered by the workflow systems. The workshop of WSBES08 focuses on practical aspects of utilising workflow techniques to fill the gap between the e-Science applications on one hand and the middleware (Grid) and the low level infrastructure on the other hand. The workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers and developers in the field of e-Science to exchange the latest experience and research ideas on scientific workflow management and e-Science. Live demos of workflow systems and workflow application highly recommended.