Collaborative Research: SI2-SSE: WRENCH: A Simulation Workbench for Scientific Workflow Users, Developers, and Researchers

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Many scientific breakthroughs can only be achieved by performing complex processing of vast amounts of data efficiently. In domains as crucial to our society as climate modeling, oceanography, particle physics, seismology, or computational biology (and in fact in most fields of physics, chemistry, and biology today), scientists nowadays routinely define "scientific workflows". These workflows are complex descriptions of scientific processes as data and inter-dependent computations on these data. When executed, typically with great expenses of computing, storage, and networking hardware, these workflows can produce groundbreaking results. A famous and recent example is the workflow that was used as part of the LIGO project to confirm the first detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Scientific workflows are mainstays in today's science. Their efficient execution (in terms of speed, reliability, and cost) is thus crucial. This project seeks to provide a software framework, called WRENCH (Workflow Simulation Workbench), that will make it possible to simulate large-scale hypothetical scenarios quickly and accurately on a single computer, obviating the need for expensive and time-consuming trial and error experiments. WRENCH potentially enables scientists to make quick and informed choices when executing their workflows, software developers to implement more efficient software infrastructures to support workflows, and researchers to develop novel efficient algorithms to be embedded within these software infrastructures. In addition, WRENCH makes it possible to bring scientific workflow content into undergraduate and graduate computer science curricula. This is because meaningful knowledge can be gained by students using a single computer and the WRENCH software stack, making such learning possible even at institutions without access to high-end computing infrastructures, such as many non-Ph.D.-granting and minority-serving institutions. As a result, this work will contribute to producing computer science graduates better equipped to take an active role in the advancing of science. Due to its potentially transformative impact on scientific workflow usage, development, research, and education, this project promises to promote the progress of science across virtually all its fields, ultimately resulting in broad and numerous benefits to our society.Scientific workflows have become mainstream for conducting large-scale scientific research. As a result, many workflow applications and Workflow Management Systems (WMSs) have been developed as part of the cyberinfrastructure to allow scientists to execute their applications seamlessly on a range of distributed platforms. In spite of many success stories, building large-scale workflows and orchestrating their executions efficiently (in terms of performance, reliability, and cost) remains a challenge given the complexity of the workflows themselves and the complexity of the underlying execution platforms. A fundamental necessary next step is the establishment of a solid "experimental science" approach for future workflow technology development. Such an approach is useful for scientists who need to design workflows and pick execution platforms, for WMS developers who need to compare alternate design and implementation options, and for researchers who need to develop novel decision-making algorithms to be implemented as part of WMSs. The broad objective of this work is to provide foundational software, the Workflow Simulation Workbench (WRENCH), upon which to develop the above experimental science approach. Capitalizing on recent advances in distributed application and platform simulation technology, WRENCH makes it possible to (i) quickly prototype workflow, WMS implementations, and decision-making algorithms; and (ii) evaluate/compare alternative options scalably and accurately for arbitrary, and often hypothetical, experimental scenarios. This project will define a generic and foundational software architecture, that is informed by current state-of-the-art WMS designs and planned future designs. The implementation of the components in this architecture when taken together form a generic "scientific instrument" that can be used by workflow users, developers, and researchers. This scientific instrument will be instantiated for several real-world WMSs and used for a range of real-world workflow applications. In a particular case-study, it will be used with a popular WMS (Pegasus) to revisit published results and scheduling algorithms in the area of workflow planning optimizations. The objective is to demonstrate the benefit of using an experimental science approach for WMS research. Another impact of this project is that it makes it possible to include scientific workflow content pervasively in undergraduate and graduate computer science curricula, even for students without any access to computing infrastructure, by defining meaningful pedagogic activities that only require a computer and the WRENCH software stack. This educational impact will be demonstrated in the classroom in both undergraduate and graduate courses at our institutions.