AdditionalIdeas

After reading some documentation, browsing myexperiment and mygrid websites, and talking with some people I have added some new elements to myexperiment's mockup. In the new mockup some elements have been taken from the existing mockup, with some additions, and some other elements have been linked from other websites like, for instance, http://www.citeulike.org. The list of possible features that can be of interest is the following:

• Workflow repository:
  • list of my workflows
  • list of my working group's worflows
  • The page that shows information about a workflow would be similar to http://myexperiment.org/mockup/workflow.html, i.e., with meta information, inputs, outputs, etc., but also with tags that describe the workflow, with comments and ratings from other users in order to have an idea of how good and reliable is this workflow, and with results achieved using it.
  • The advantage of using tags is that they are easily created (there are many examples of successful sites based on this) and they can describe the workflow as a whole, instead of a set of individual inputs, outputs and processors.
  • find workflows: this can be based on textual/semantic search and on graph matching (find by example)

• Goals:
  • discovery based on tags: similar to http://www.43things.com
  • goals are defined by tags: one goal - one tag (tags are not just a word, they can be, for example, "conquer the world"). These tags are different from those used to describe a workflow.
  • every goal can have also:
    • list of comments
    • list of people working on this goal
    • list of people that achieved this goal
    • list of related papers
    • list of related workflows
  • everyone can contribute, helping ones to others

• Bibliography:
  • similar to http://www.citeulike.org
  • relate papers to goals and workflows
  • everyone can have her own bibliographic list, with three subsections:
    • public: other people can read comments about these papers
    • private: papers very related to my current work. These are private because the scientist don't want to give clues about her current work
    • personal: papers contributed by this user
  • there can be also a section devoted to share papers within a working group. The objective is to have all the papers interesting for that working group at a glance.

• Personal Profile:
  • data that a scientist want to make available to others: name, organization, goals on which he is working, blog, bibliography, links to institutes, ...

• Institute Profile:
  • every institute can have a public profile with the Web services they offer, their workflows, etc. It can be similar to a scientist's personal profile, but with information about the institute. It can contain also links to employees' profiles, as well as Web services provided by this institute.

• Blogs:
  • a user/group can have her/their blog to post relevant information about workflow development. This can be helpful for others to know the process of solving some difficulties related to a concrete task.

• RSSReader:
  • useful to read information from blogs. This includes blogs created by other scientists and "external" blogs that the user can find interesting.

• Wiki:
  • in principle, this is only for a working group where their components can write documents in order to collaborate to the shared knowledge.

Paul has provided a list with the priority of each feature and with comments:

1. Workflow repository - find workflows (the rest of the options you gave are still important but not as high priority)
2. Goals - discovery based on tags / annotation of workflows and services
3. Institute Profile - lists of web services and workflows and related work
4. Bibliography - Important to have a list of related work so can be referenced, especially for writing up papers and PhDs
5. Personal Profile - Details of persons work (and workflows ??)
6. RSS reader - (I'm not too sure how RSS works but I was under the impression it was a capability) Handy for monthly updates
7. Blogs - Good for up to date info and use case information in relation to individual or group project work and workflow development
8. Wiki - Good for Inter-Group communication but not as high a priority as all the others.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

REST interface

Using REST as an architecture, for instance using Restlet