A Distributed Re-configurable Grid Workflow Engine

Grid workflow, as a basic service in the grid environment, is a useful tool to help researchers make use of various gird resources to solve scientific problems. It is possible lots of users invoke grid workflow services in a very narrow time interval. Therefore, a centralized grid workflow engine is apt to be a bottleneck. In the paper, a novel grid workflow engine is proposed. It is based on Jini platform and employs Jini services to implement functions of grid workflow engine. By adding or removing enactment services, the grid workflow engine can be reconfigured dynamically. The workflow manager of the engine can allocate requests to proper enactment services according to some load-balancing strategy. The structure and mechanisms of this grid workflow engine are discussed in the paper. A prototype system and testing results are also introduced.