@ARTICLE{RBBDMMMM07,
  title = {{Biowep: a workflow enactment portal for bioinformatics applications}},
  author = {Romano, Paolo and Bartocci, Ezio and Bertolini, Guglielmo and Marra, Domenico and Mauri, Giancarlo and Merelli, Emanuela and Milanesi, Luciano},
  journal = {BMC Bioinformatics},
  pages = {S19},
  abstract = {Background
      The huge amount of biological information, its distribution over the Internet
      and the heterogeneity of available software tools makes the adoption of new
      data integration and analysis network tools a necessity in bioinformatics. ICT
      standards and tools, like Web Services and Workflow Management Systems (WMS),
      can support the creation and deployment of such systems. Many Web Services are
      already available and some WMS have been proposed. They assume that researchers
      know which bioinformatics resources can be reached through a programmatic
      interface and that they are skilled in programming and building workflows.
      Therefore, they are not viable to the majority of unskilled researchers. A
      portal enabling these to take profit from new technologies is still missing.
      
      Results
      We designed biowep, a web based client application that allows for the
      selection and execution of a set of predefined workflows. The system is
      available on-line. Biowep architecture includes a Workflow Manager, a User
      Interface and a Workflow Executor. The task of the Workflow Manager is the
      creation and annotation of workflows. These can be created by using either the
      Taverna Workbench or BioWMS. Enactment of workflows is carried out by FreeFluo
      for Taverna workflows and by BioAgent/Hermes, a mobile agent-based middleware,
      for BioWMS ones. Main workflows' processing steps are annotated on the basis of
      their input and output, elaboration type and application domain by using a
      classification of bioinformatics data and tasks. The interface supports users
      authentication and profiling. Workflows can be selected on the basis of users'
      profiles and can be searched through their annotations. Results can be saved.
      
      Conclusion
      We developed a web system that support the selection and execution of
      predefined workflows, thus simplifying access for all researchers. The
      implementation of Web Services allowing specialized software to interact with
      an exhaustive set of biomedical databases and analysis software and the
      creation of effective workflows can significantly improve automation of
      in-silico analysis. Biowep is available for interested researchers as a
      reference portal. They are invited to submit their workflows to the workflow
      repository. Biowep is further being developed in the sphere of the Laboratory
      of Interdisciplinary Technologies in Bioinformatics – LITBIO.},
  volume = {8},
  number = {Suppl 1},
  year = {2007},
  url = {http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/S1/S19},
}