Citation
Gongjing Cao, Lei Dou, Quinn Hart, Bertram Ludaescher. "Kepler/G-Pack: A Kepler Package Using the Google Cloud for Interactive Scientific Workflows". Talk or presentation, 16, February, 2011; Presented at the Ninth Biennial Ptolemy Miniconference, Berkeley, CA.

Abstract
Scientific workflows often aim at fully automating complex data analysis pipelines. However, depending on the nature of the scientific workflow, interactive steps, i.e., which involve human analysis and decision making within the workflow are also common. So far, Kepler has had limited capabilities for letting users become "actors" in a scientific workflow. The Kepler/G-Pack (Google package) is a set of actors that leverage a simple form of cloud computing via Google-Apps and Google-Docs, effectively "outsourcing" Kepler tasks to Google resources. With this package, many tasks and steps that users would use the Google document and computational cloud for can now be orchestrated by Kepler programmatically. For example, via certain actors in this package, Google spreadsheets can be used as data sources, sinks, or computational steps ("transformers") in a Kepler workflow. Additional functionalities include: creating a new copy of a spreadsheet from a template, sharing a spreadsheet with another user, emailing the user to notify the sharing, provide feedback to the workflow that a human interactive session has finished ("committed") so the workflow instance may proceed, visualizing analysis outputs via Google charts etc. We will demonstrate the capabilities of the Kepler/G-Pack using different workflows, e.g., (1) a "Data Curation Workflow" in which biological specimen records are semi-automatically curated: The upstream part of the workflow groups records, identifying "curation work packages" that curators can validate or manually revise (this workflow shows the use of spreadsheets for data fusion and manual data cleaning within the workflow); (2) an "Evapotranspiration Workflow" which shows how Google spreadsheets can be used for remote computation and visualization.

Electronic downloads

• 10CaoKepler%20G-pack_UCDavis.pdf · application/pdf · 900 kbytes

• HTML

  Gongjing Cao, Lei Dou, Quinn Hart, Bertram Ludaescher. <a
  href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/814.html"><i>Kepler/G-Pack:
  A Kepler Package Using the Google Cloud for Interactive
  Scientific Workflows</i></a>, Talk or
  presentation,  16, February, 2011; Presented at the <a
  href="http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/conferences/11"
  >Ninth Biennial Ptolemy Miniconference</a>,
  Berkeley, CA.

• Plain text

  Gongjing Cao, Lei Dou, Quinn Hart, Bertram Ludaescher.
  "Kepler/G-Pack: A Kepler Package Using the Google Cloud
  for Interactive Scientific Workflows". Talk or
  presentation,  16, February, 2011; Presented at the <a
  href="http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/conferences/11"
  >Ninth Biennial Ptolemy Miniconference</a>,
  Berkeley, CA.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{CaoDouHartLudaescher11_KeplerGPackKeplerPackageUsingGoogleCloudForInteractive,
      author = {Gongjing Cao and Lei Dou and Quinn Hart and
                Bertram Ludaescher},
      title = {Kepler/G-Pack: A Kepler Package Using the Google
                Cloud for Interactive Scientific Workflows},
      day = {16},
      month = {February},
      year = {2011},
      note = {Presented at the <a
                href="http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/conferences/11"
                >Ninth Biennial Ptolemy Miniconference</a>,
                Berkeley, CA.},
      abstract = {Scientific workflows often aim at fully automating
                complex data analysis pipelines. However,
                depending on the nature of the scientific
                workflow, interactive steps, i.e., which involve
                human analysis and decision making within the
                workflow are also common. So far, Kepler has had
                limited capabilities for letting users become
                "actors" in a scientific workflow. The
                Kepler/G-Pack (Google package) is a set of actors
                that leverage a simple form of cloud computing via
                Google-Apps and Google-Docs, effectively
                "outsourcing" Kepler tasks to Google resources.
                With this package, many tasks and steps that users
                would use the Google document and computational
                cloud for can now be orchestrated by Kepler
                programmatically. For example, via certain actors
                in this package, Google spreadsheets can be used
                as data sources, sinks, or computational steps
                ("transformers") in a Kepler workflow. Additional
                functionalities include: creating a new copy of a
                spreadsheet from a template, sharing a spreadsheet
                with another user, emailing the user to notify the
                sharing, provide feedback to the workflow that a
                human interactive session has finished
                ("committed") so the workflow instance may
                proceed, visualizing analysis outputs via Google
                charts etc. We will demonstrate the capabilities
                of the Kepler/G-Pack using different workflows,
                e.g., (1) a "Data Curation Workflow" in which
                biological specimen records are semi-automatically
                curated: The upstream part of the workflow groups
                records, identifying "curation work packages" that
                curators can validate or manually revise (this
                workflow shows the use of spreadsheets for data
                fusion and manual data cleaning within the
                workflow); (2) an "Evapotranspiration Workflow"
                which shows how Google spreadsheets can be used
                for remote computation and visualization.},
      URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/814.html}
  }
  

Posted by Christopher Brooks on 18 Feb 2011.
Groups: ptolemy
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