This is an introduction to creating components in Taverna.

1. Taverna Components
The Basics
Donal Fellows
School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester
SCAPE Developer Workshop
Brno, 19–21 November 2013

2. Taverna Components Are…
• Something that can be put into a workflow
• Well described
• What the component does
• Where to find it
• Behaves “well”
• Conforms to agreed good practice policy
• Curated
• Someone looks after it
• Produces and consumes data in agreed formats
• Fails in described ways
• Meaningful error messages
• Produces agreed type of provenance
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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3. Components Model
• Implemented by Workflows
• Collect Components in Families
• Groups similar components together
• Families share common Profile
• Defines what it means to be a family member
• Profiles inherit from Base Profile
• Defines semantics of workflows and standard annotations
• Store in a Registry
• We use myExperiment as the shared Registry
• Use a local registry on your filesystem when developing new
components
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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4. Component Architecture
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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5. Finding Components
Within Taverna
Online on myExperiment
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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6. Supported Versions
• Make sure you have the right version of the tools!
• Out Now: Taverna Workbench 2.4 with Plugin
• Component Plugin 1.1.2
• Out Very Soon: Taverna Workbench 2.5
• Incorporated as core functionality
• Out Very Soon: Taverna Server 2.5.1 or later
• 2.5.2 will have provenance support
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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7. Making a Component
1. Decide what you want to do…
•
“Combine measures documents”
2. Create a workflow to do it
•
Don’t forget to annotate!
3. Turn it into a component
1. “Components” Menu
2. “Create component…”
3. Choose registry, family and name
•
You may need to create a family (see next slide)
4. Any final adjustments before publication? Do now
5. Save component, providing a description
4. If it is public, share component with SCAPE via
myExperiment website
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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8. Creating a Component Family
1. “Components”  “Create family…”
2. Select registry and profile
TIP: You can create profiles from the “Components”
menu by importing them from myExperiment
3. Provide a name and description
4. If it is a family on a public repository, set the sharing
policy and license
5. If you want to share your family with SCAPE, you do
that via the myExperiment web interface
TIP: Try to avoid creating families unless there’s a functional reason
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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9. Using a Component
• Import the Family into service panel
• “Import new services”
• “Component service…”
• Pick registry and family
• See that family members are now
available
• Drag the component across (or
right-click and “add” from menu) to
add to your workflow
TIP: Private components will not be usable by
others or by the execution platform (got to
read the component definition to run it!)
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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10. Updating a Component
• Open the component
• “Components”  “Open component…”
• Edit the component
• Save (either normally or via
“Components” menu)
• Provide description of version
• Tell workflows to use new version
• Right-click  “Configure component…”
• Pick the version to use
• TIP: They do not update automatically
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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11. Open Issues
• SPARQL searches not exposed in plugin
• They’re there in myExperiment, but too hard to use for most
users so that UI is switched off
• Full semantic annotation not exposed
• Gets very problematic when dealing with FOAF annotations
for creators
• Profile validation not complete
• No true interface for creating profiles
• Just importing already existing profile documents
• Many features wanted by other projects are missing
This work was partially supported by the SCAPE Project.
The SCAPE project is co‐funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT‐2009.4.1 (Grant Agreement number 270137).
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