A common workflow registry of compute endpoints and applications

This is a presentation given at the 11th JLESC workshop (https://jlesc.github.io/events/11th-jlesc-workshop/)

There is now a large and ever growing number of workflow systems, and we have lost hope in encouraging users not to continue developing more. Instead, we want to focus on building shared elements that can help us with our own systems, as well as the users of those systems and the developers of applications that will increasingly be used as workflow elements in simulation, analysis, search, optimization, and parameter study research campaigns.

As discussed briefly at JLESC 9 (in ST A1.1. Python-based Workflows & Software Sustainability), two of the common types of elements that workflow systems interact with are the end computing systems and the preexisting applications that the workflows wrap and call. Today, users of a workflow system have to find information about both the end points and the applications, they have to map that information to workflow-specific configuration formats, individually customize their workflow to use these configurations, and keep up with changes over time. Instead, we propose a registry of compute end points and applications, where an entry could be automatically brought in to a workflow system.