High Level Requirement Specification

Better Descriptions of Parameters

Overview

Some services are difficult to use since there is no useful description of the parameters that service requires. It is also not clear whether parameters are required or optional.

Overall Goals

A better description of the parameters, including possibly default values. Also the ability to distinguish between optional and required parameters.

Assessment

Affected Components

Taverna workbench. There is also a reliance on the services themselves providing the necessary information (many do not describe the parameters but do indicate whether they are optional or not).

Key Tasks

• Extract descriptions from service descriptors.
• Update UI and underlying code to support displaying of descriptions of parameters.
• Update UI and underlying code to indicate optional parameters.

Appendix

• See DefaultParameterValues
• Find and attach parameter metadata, descriptions, examples, defaults. Store in data model.