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International Conference on Business Process Management

BPM 2009: Business Process Management pp 31–47Cite as

Scientific Workflows: Business as Usual?

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 5701))

Abstract

Business workflow management and business process modeling are mature research areas, whose roots go far back to the early days of office automation systems. Scientific workflow management, on the other hand, is a much more recent phenomenon, triggered by (i) a shift towards data-intensive and computational methods in the natural sciences, and (ii) the resulting need for tools that can simplify and automate recurring computational tasks. In this paper, we provide an introduction and overview of scientific workflows, highlighting features and important concepts commonly found in scientific workflow applications. We illustrate these using simple workflow examples from a bioinformatics domain. We then discuss similarities and, more importantly, differences between scientific workflows and business workflows. While some concepts and solutions developed in one domain may be readily applicable to the other, there remain sufficiently many differences that warrant a new research effort at the intersection of scientific and business workflows. We close by proposing a number of research opportunities for cross-fertilization between the scientific workflow and business workflow communities.

This research was conducted while the second author was on sabbatical leave at UC Davis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Genome Center, University of California Davis, USA

    Bertram Ludäscher, Timothy McPhillips & Shawn Bowers

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of California Davis, USA

    Bertram Ludäscher

  3. Hasso-Plattner-Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany

    Mathias Weske

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

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, 1501 Page Mill Rd., 94304, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Umeshwar Dayal

  2. Alps Adria University Klagenfurt, Universitätsstr. 65, 9020, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Johann Eder

  3. IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Saeumerstr. 4, 8803, Rüschlikon, Switzerland

    Jana Koehler

  4. Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600, Eindhoven, MB, The Netherlands

    Hajo A. Reijers

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Ludäscher, B., Weske, M., McPhillips, T., Bowers, S. (2009). Scientific Workflows: Business as Usual? . In: Dayal, U., Eder, J., Koehler, J., Reijers, H.A. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5701. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03848-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03848-8_4

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