[Myexperiment-discuss] Re: Towards a cyberinfrastructure for the biological sciences: progress, visions and challenges

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "KC" == Kei Cheung <address@hidden> writes:

  KC> Peter Ansell wrote:
  >> Wiki's explicitly allow for a permanent link to a particular version of
  >> something. Hopefully an implementation of a wiki-like workflow editor
  >> online, will have similar characteristics so that you can still use a
  >> particular version to reproduce a past result if you need to, provided
  >> the web services still exist and haven't changed their interface ;-) It
  >> would also be nice to be able to get corrected versions via the wiki
  >> mechanism though and that would suit the Web 2.0 way, as opposed to
  >> publications to which corrections are hard to make.
  >> 
  >> 
  >> 
  KC> If some journals are requiring raw data (e.g., microarray data) to be
  KC> submitted to a public data repository, I wonder if workflows that are
  KC> used to analyze the data should also be submitted to a public workflow
  KC> repository.



It's a nice idea but doesn't quite allow the same level of repeatability. Most
taverna workflows need updating periodically, as the services go offline or
change their interfaces. Even if they don't, they return different results as
the implementation changes. 

Ultimately, you need to store more than the workflow to allow any degree of
repeatability. Still, it would be a good step forward which is no bad thing. 

Phil