Overview of web UI needs

Diversity of needs

Providing access to Kepler capabilities via the web is a high priority for many projects.  However, the specific needs represented by these projects are very diverse.  A particular project may need to support only one or two of the usage scenarios and capabilities listed in each of the subsections below.

Range of usage scenarios in different projects

• Asynchronously view outputs and reports from runs of periodic or long-running workflows.
• Configure and run workflows from the web using a unified interface for all workflows.
  
• Start, configure, wait for, and display results from a workflow using a (thin or rich) web-based interface specific to a workflow or set of workflows, where the the interface may not look or behave at all like the Kepler desktop GUI.
  
• Author and execute workflows, using a project-specific (but project-wide) custom user interface simpler and less function-rich than the Kepler desktop GUI.
  
• Author, edit, configure, start, and wait for Kepler workflows from a rich, remote client with all the functionality of the Kepler desktop GUI.

Range of needed run-time interactivity capabilities

• No real-time display, with actors that generate display sending their results to the bit bucket.
• Monitor status of a run (is it still running? did it crash?  did it complete successfully?) and its progress (how far has it progressed? how much longer will it run?).
• A report actor (or other component) that collects outputs from other actors and creates a report for the run that can be display on the web.
• Real-time display of outputs from actors that would generate real-time display output if run locally.

Observations

• Providing a web-based user interface with exactly those capabilities of the Kepler desktop GUI would satisfy the needs of some, but not most projects.