Special section on workflow systems and applications in e-Science

A significant review on workflow systems, its applications in e-Science, and some selected papers from WSES07, SWF07, and SWBES07 workshop, is presented. The various aspects of scientific workflows include workflow scheduling, provenance, data management, and applications of workflows in e-Science. A workflow system need to have some important properties like declarativity, well-formedness, predictability, and recordability from the usability point of view. Deelman and co-workers discuss the features and capabilities of existing workflow systems and current research in scientific workflows from the perspective of the workflow lifecycle including composition, mapping, execution, and publication. Fairman and co-workers discuss how Microsoft Visual Studio IDE and the Windows Presentation Foundation can be used to design and manage a GENIE workflow.