Workflows

Introduction

In bioinformatics Workflows contain an interconnected and orchestrated series of computational or data manipulation steps. In order to compose and execute such workflows one needs workflow management systems. Workflow management systems can represent how computation proceeds from one step to the next one in a form of directed graph in which nodes represent tasks to be executed and edges represent either the flow of data or dependencies between different tasks. Among the many workflow management systems suited for bioinformatics workflows we will consider two common frameworks that are used to create, manage and execute workflows. namely:

  • KNIME and
  • Galaxy

KNIME Workflows

In KNIME workflows are composed of (KNIME) nodes connected to each other by edges. The nodes are a representation of an application/algorithm that takes an input, process it and produces a desired output. The edges represent a flow of data from one specific application to the next one.

Generic KNIME nodes

KNIME nodes are usually shipped as eclipse plugins. The term Generic KNIME node refers to KNIME node (eclipse plugin) generated from any command line tool. This is done via GenericKnimeNodes (GWN) package which provides an infrastructure to automatically generate such nodes from the description of their command line.

Important

Galaxy Workflows