Digital System Explorer (DSE)

Overview

The Digital System Explorer (DSE) allows for the creation of workflow execution forms and visualizations. Forms and executions can be shared to foster collaboration and to rapidly share information in a group of scientists. Every time a new execution is submitted a new set of derived data sets and visualizations becomes available. Users can download those data sets, the underlying workflow or they can share a particular execution with colleagues by sending a URL.

Any information about data products, workflows, what inputs users can specify in the web forms, comments, tags are stored in a platform independent format using Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model and accessed using the Tupelo semantic content repository framework.

1. Workflow Creation on the Desktop

Scientific workflow designers and developers continue to use the desktop based editors they are familiar with to test and develop new computations. They can share relevant workflows by publishing them to active web spaces where they can be executed by other users.

2. Workflow Publishing to the Web

The workflow worker configures which aspects of the workflow should be exposed and how in the web application. Wizards guide this process. The expertise of the researcher is used to refine what aspects of the computation users should be able to manipulate when submitting a new execution and how the results should be visualized so to emphasize the more relevant aspects of the derived data sets.

3. Problem Focused Web Spaces

Researchers, scientists or end users visit scientific scenario to browse existing data sets or produce new ones by submitting new executions. The interface presented to the user is the one defined in the publication step. The user is presented with forms and widgets that can hide the complexity of the workflow and publishing process.

4. Web Execution and Data Visualization

Users can browse for and comment on previous executions, derived data sets and visualizations or submit new ones. The library of visualizations includes open visualization services (such as the Google Visualization API), open source visualization libraries (JFreeChart, amCharts), and adhoc visualizations written in a variety of frameworks (for ex. Processing).

Technology

The Digital System Explorer (DSE) built on top of open standards, and open source libraries and tools. The system consists of five main components, Tupelo, DSE, Cyberintegrator, and a scheduling service.

Third Party

NCSA

Team Members

Collaborations & Communities

Publications and Presentations:

  1. Publishing Active Workflows to Problem-Focused Web Spaces. Luigi Marini, Rob Kooper, Peter Bajcsy, James Myers. (2008). Poster presented at the 4th IEEE International Converence on e-Science. Indianapolis, IN. December 7-12, 2008.
  2. A Digital Synthesis Framework for Virtual Observatories. J D Myers, L Marini, P Bajcsy, R Kooper, Y Liu, R McGrath, J Futrelle, T McLaren, A Collier, A Rodriguez. (2008). Presented at AGU 2008 Fall Meeting. San Francisco, CA. December 15-19, 2008.

Acknowledgements

Related Links

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