Pack: Taverna 2.1 beta 1 pack

Introduction

This is a pack for the first beta of Taverna 2.1

It includes a zip of Taverna 2.1 beta 1.  The zip includes the executable of Taverna 2.1 beta 1, some example files, release notes and a list of known issues.  If you have any comments or problems with the beta, then please post them as comments to this pack, or preferably to the taverna-hackers@lists.sourceforge.net

Welcome to Taverna 2.1 Beta 1 workbench

Due to user response to Taverna 2 workbench, major improvements have been made to the user interface of Taverna 2.1 Beta 1 workbench.  Many of these are described here.

Future improvements are planned, especially in the viewing of results.

Overall organization

The workflow explorer has been moved from the right-hand side of Taverna workbench to below the service panel.

Service panel

The service panel replaces the activity palette of Taverna 2 workbench.  It has a simplified and more familiar interface.

The services are now organized so that Service templates i.e. services that always require configuration such as Beanshell, are grouped together.

The tree used to display the services is more natural, with service-type specific organization within the branches.

The service panel allows filtered search of services.  Type in text to search on and the service panel will just show the matching services.  Note that it may match on attributes of the services that are not immediately visibile.

The service panel automatically saves the set of service providers that are loaded.  This means that if you add a new WSDL then it will be there the next time you start Taverna.

Service providers can be removed from the service panel.

Adding services to the workflow

You can now add services to the current workflow by right-clicking on the service in the service panel.  You can still drag-and-drop the service into either the workflow explorer or the workflow diagram.

If the service that you add needs to be configured, then the configuration panel for that type of service will automatically pop-up.

Workflow creation

You can now use all of the necessary workflow creation and editing functions from within the workflow explorer.  Merges and control links (for "run after" specification) are now shown in the workflow explorer.

Merges can now be configured to control the order in which the data arriving is combined.

Objects in the workflow explorer and workflow diagram can be configured by right-clicking on them.

Data link creation is more intelligent so that it does not allow the creation of loops.

Run dialog

The run dialog has been changed so that a graphical representation of the workflow and information about the ports, including example values is shown.  The mechanism for entering input values for ports has been made more user-friendly.

The dialog "remembers" the values used for previous runs of the workflow.

Results viewing

The results view now shows when all the data has arrived at an output (the port turns grey) and also gives an indication of whether the workflow is still running.

The number of iterations of a service during the run is shown in the top right of the service.

If any calls to a service fail, then the service is shown in red and the number of failures shown in the bottom right of the service.

Intermediate results of a service can be examined by clicking on the service.  The input and output values for each iteration of the service can be examined.  The results for several services can be viewed at the same time (in separate windows).

Data storage

The storing of the values passed between services has been made more efficient.  The values are now stored, if necessary, in a database.  Because of the in-memory caching used, there is negligible impact on workflow runtime whilst allowing the handling of larger datasets.

Known issues

As this is a beta, there are some issues which will be fixed for the Taverna 2.1 release.  These are detailed in known-issues.txt within the zip file.

29th May 2009