How does Kepler extend Ptolemy?
Kepler extensions to Ptolemy include an ever increasing number of components (called actors in Ptolemy terminology) aimed particularly at scientific applications, e.g., for remote data and metadata access, data transformations, data analysis, interfacing with legacy applications, web service invocation and deployment, provenance tracking, etc. Target application areas include bioinformatics, cheminformatics, ecoinformatics, and geoinformatics workflows among others. Kepler also inherits from Ptolemy the actor-oriented modeling paradigm that separates workflow components from the overall workflow orchestration (via so-called directors), making components more easily reusable. Through actor-oriented and hierarchical modeling features built into Ptolemy, Kepler scientific workflows can operate at very different level of granularity, from low-level “plumbing workflows” that explictely move data around, start and monitor remote jobs, etc. to high-level “conceptual workflows” that interlink
