A Dynamic Data Integration Approach to Build Scientific Workflow Systems

The need for collaboration between individual scientificfields increases with the wish for more global engineeringoptimizations and assessment requirements. Since areas ofresearch become more and more fine-grained domains ofthere own, it is still very desirable to cooperate with otherexperts with more chance than ever to gain synergies whenscience is scattered as today. But this exchange of knowl-edge comes only into consideration if it can be used in asimple way with at most an moderate initial effort. To thisend a framework is developed that lets scientists easily useknowledge of others without the need to understand theirwork and technology completely. Furthermore a genericcommon data format based on XML technology is devel-oped for exchanging and storing data between differentdomain-specific applications. To support all implementers,a twofold abstraction layer was introduced to encapsulatetheir knowledge shielding it from the technical environment.