Workflow Visualization

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Workflow Visualization

• Anna Sallstrom

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The situation

• VLab portal
• Tools for material analysis
• Portlets
• Workflow organization
• Projects
• Phases
• Tasks

Job monitor portlet
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Goals for a visualization

• We want it to be simple and easy to read
• Use a tree layout
• We want it to fit into the portal naturally
• Toggle between text and visual
• Display inside the browser
• So itll be an applet

Project
Phase
Phase
Task
Task
Task
Task
Task
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An existing solution

• Written by Laurie Labadie
• prefuse visualization toolkit
• WebStart application

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Debugging the visualization

• Its beautiful! But sometimes it behaves
  unexpectedly
• Color modes
• Filters
• Nodes and edges
• Code complexity makes finding and fixing bugs
  difficult
• Type codes
• Repeated code
• Variables in multiple locations

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Can it be made an applet?

• It uses several packages that arent part of the
  standard Java distribution
• WebStart applications can download these
  automatically, applets cant
• Not easily, not right now
• and maybe this application provides more than
  we need anyway

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Writing a new applet

• Writing a test applet
• JGraph
• Object oriented design
• Projects, Phases, and Tasks
• Test data

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Getting it online

• So much to learn!
• Containing it in a portlet
• Portlets wrappers around servlets can interface
  with portals
• Servlets Java applications that output HTML
• JavaServer Pages (JSP) compiles into Java
  servlets
• Deploying the portlet to the portal
• Gridsphere portal
• Tomcat web container

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Getting it online

• Whats left?
• Reading in projects from the job monitor
• Rearranging the tree to make reading tasks easier
• Working on it!