Styx Grid Services: Lightweight, Easy-to-Use Middleware for Scientific Workflows

Abstract

The service-oriented approach to performing distributed scientific research is potentially very powerful but is not yet widely used in many scientific fields. This is partly due to the technical difficulties involved in creating services and composing them into workflows. We present the Styx Grid Service, a simple system that wraps command-line programs and allows them to be run over the Internet exactly as if they were local programs. Styx Grid Services are very easy to create and use and can be composed into powerful workflows with simple shell scripts or more sophisticated graphical tools. Data can be streamed directly from service to service and progress can be monitored asynchronously using a mechanism that places very few demands on firewalls. Styx Grid Services can interoperate with Web Services and WS-Resources.