Our Future with Kepler

1
Our Future with Kepler

• Terence Critchlow
• On behalf of the entire SPA team
• UCRL-PRES-226634

2
Current Kepler User Interface

• Single interface to design and execute workflow
• Minimal control over execution

• Thick client
• No user customization
• Independent of workflow

3
Target Kepler Interface

• Separate workflow creation from execution
• Provide execution control capabilities

• Web based portal interface
• Customized based on user task

4
Provenance Tracking

• Provenance director that tracks
• Data provenance
• What actor generated each intermediate results
• What path through the workflow generated each
  final result
• What were the configuration parameters
• What is the association between the inputs and
  outputs
• Workflow provenance
• Was the workflow based on modifications to a
  previous w/f
• What versions of the actors were used during
  execution
• What workflow engine parameters were used / set

5
Enhanced Capabilites

• Capability based actors
• Provide high-level functionality without exposing
  implementation details
• Improve generality of workflows

• Templates
• Provide overview of specific workflow and let
  user fill in specific tasks
• Asynchronous merging
• Ability to combine outputs from multiple actors
  into a single stream
• Memory-to-memory transfers
• Use multiple ports to support data and control
  flow between actors

6
Conclusions

• Kepler is a powerful, flexible workflow
  infrastructure
• In order to directly support scientists we need
  to focus on improving usability of system
• Improve interface and workflow design features
• Provide additional capabilities such as
  provenance
• Extend existing capabilities to support
  large-scale science workflows

7
This work was performed under the auspices of the
U.S. Department of Energy by University of
California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
under contract No. W-7405-ENG-48.