Taverna Plugins
Taverna is designed so that plugins can be downloaded in order to increase its functionality. The plugins are specific to versions of Taverna. The majority of the plugins are currently for Taverna 1.7. Some plugins for Taverna 2.0 are available and ones for Taverna 2.1 are being developed.
Taverna 1.7 plugins
Installing Plugins
To install a plugin for Taverna 1.7 (1.7.1 or 1.7.2) you use the plugin manager. Select ‘plugin manger’ from the ‘tools’ menu. If your plugin is not visible, select ‘Find New Plugins’. You may need to add the plugin site using ‘Add Plugin Site’ for specific plugins. Check the box for the plugin and click install. You may need to restart Taverna 1.7 for the plugin to become visible.
Known Taverna 1.7 plugins
- General workbench plugins that extend how you can use Taverna:
- The Dataplayground plugin that allows users to construct workflows oriented around their data
- The Feta search plugin to allow users to search the Feta registry of services
- The logbook plugin that allows the recording of information about the provenance of a workflow run
- The myExperiment and WHIP (Workflow Hosted In Portals) plugin that allows users to browse and run workflows from myExperiment
- Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology have developed three plugins: a PDF renderer, a comma-separated values (csv) renderer and an Excel to cvs converter. The plugin site is http://dbk-ed.mib.man.ac.uk/taverna/1.7/plugins/.
- The University of Southampton have developed a Processor Status Plugin for Taverna 1.7.0 that checks if WSDL and SoapLab processors are running and if their specification has changed since the workflow was created. The plugin site is http://kraz.omii.ac.uk/workflow-monitor/plugins/
- New service type plugins that allow you to include different types of services in your workflow:
- The interaction service plugin that allows workflows to include services that interact with users
- The BioMoby plugin is integrated with Taverna and allows users to include BioMoby services within their workflows.
- A Soaplab2 plugin that allows users to include Soaplab2 services in their workflows. The plugin site is http://soaplab.sourceforge.net/taverna-plugin/
- The CDK-Taverna plugin that gives users access to CDK services. The plugin site is http://cdk-taverna.de/plugin/.
- Ingo Wassink from the University of Twente, NL has updated the Taverna RShell to be compatible with R 2.7+ (and the newest Rserve version). This version is also backwards compatible with R 2.3+ and the corresponding Rserve version.
- omixed have developed a plugin to allow access to “customisable storage system for scientific data”. The plugin site is http://www.omixed.org/taverna/plugin/
- Execution plugins that allow you to include services run on a grid, or to run your workflow on a grid or external server:
- The localworker JSDL plugin that produces JSDL compatible with GridSAM-2.0.1 webservices
- The remote execution plugin that allows workflows to be run on a remote execution service i.e. a machine other than the user’s
- A myProxy manager plugin is available from the myGrid team’s sandbox site. The URL is “http://www.mygrid.org.uk/taverna/updates/1.7.1/plugins/sandbox/”.
- The ARC plugin that allows users to to access computational grids for remote computations and usage of grid-based storage elements. The plugin site is http://taverna.nordugrid.org/.
- caGrid have developed a plugin to allow users to add grid services to a workflow. The plugin site is http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~madduri/taverna/.
Taverna 2.0 plugins
Installing Plugins
To install a plugin for Taverna 2.0 you use the plugin manager. Select ‘Software updates’ from the ‘Advanced’ menu. If your plugin is not visible, select ‘Find New Plugins’. You may need to add the plugin site using ‘Add Plugin Site’ for specific plugins. Check the box for the plugin and click install. You may need to restart Taverna 2.0 for the plugin to become visible.
Known Taverna 2.0 plugins
- The caGrid team have developed the cagrid discoverer: This plug-in, from the site http://software.cagrid.org/taverna2/, is used to query caGrid services from the caGrid Index Service. This allows you to easily find the available caGrid services, and select and leverage them as needed for your workflow.
- The caGrid team have also developed workflow-execution service: This workflow-execution plugin-in, from the site http://software.cagrid.org/taverna2/, passes a workflow definition file, including the appropriate inputs, to a generic caGrid service, where the workflow is then executed. This is useful in instances where the workflow is long-running and relies on constant access to the Grid to execute properly.
- Egon Willighagen of Uppsala University, Sweden, has developed a plugin that allows workflows to include XWS (XMPP IO-DATA) cloud services. The plugin is available from GitHub
- Richard Holland of Eagle Genomics while working for Sara Grid has developed a gLite plugin that allows workflows to include services that run on a grid.
Taverna 2.1 plugins
Installing Plugins
To install a plugin for Taverna 2.1 beta you use the plugin manager. Select ‘Updates and plugins’ from the ‘Advanced’ menu. If your plugin is not visible, select ‘Find New Plugins’. You may need to add the plugin site using ‘Add Plugin Site’ for specific plugins. Check the box for the plugin and click install. You may need to restart Taverna 2.1 beta for the plugin to become visible.
Known Taverna 2.1 beta plugins
- David Withers has developed an Excel plugin that allows you to include services that extract data from Excel spreadsheets. The plugin is available in the standard set of available plugins.