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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 3320–3324Cite as

Scientific Workflows

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Synonyms

Grid workflow; In silico experiment

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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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bertram Ludäscher .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Barbara Pernici

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Ludäscher, B., Bowers, S., McPhillips, T. (2018). Scientific Workflows. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1471

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