The Bio-jETI Framework - User-Level Workflow Design: A Bioinformatics Perspective - page 32

Fig. 2.2 Graphical user interface of the jABC

Building Blocks , or simply SIBs ) on a canvas and connecting them with la-
beled edges (called branches ). Figure 2.2 shows its user interface: the available
SIBs are listed in a browser (upper left), from where they can be dragged
onto the “drawing” area (right), where the model construction takes place.
Different inspectors (lower left) can be used for the detailed configuration of
components and models. With this graphical interface, models can be recon-
figured and extended very easily.
Additional functionality is brought to the framework by means of plugins.
In particular, any kind of interpretation of the model is subject to specific
plugins. As discussed in detail in [229], the basic jABC framework can be
extended by two principal kinds of plugins:

1. Semantics plugins provide functionality for specific interpretations of the
graphical model or its components.
2. Feature plugins extend the range of general, domain-independent func-
tionality that is available in the jABC.
In the light of interpreting the graphical models as Service Logic Graphs
( SLGs ), that is, as executable control-flow models composed of services, Bio-
jETI comprises the following semantics plugins:
•

The Tracer plugin [86] provides an interpreter and execution environment.
It interprets the models of the jABC as directed graphs that express the
control-flow of a process. The Tracer allows for the stepwise or complete
execution of the SLGs, and the use of breakpoints. It provides detailed
information on the execution history, the objects in the execution context,