Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 8.1
The generation of two data products as a workflow
cannot even function if the applications it depends on are not available, e.g. we
cannot run the above Java program if we haven't installed a Java Virtual Machine.
This has been discussed in general terms in previous chapters. Here we wish to
go into more detail, particularly about software dependencies because these are, as
has been explained, important in their own right, and they provide clear illustrations
of dependencies.
It is becoming clear that many, perhaps most, digital objects are actually complex
data structures that either contain information about something or use computa-
tional resources to do various tasks. These objects depend on a plethora of other
resources whose record is of great importance for the preservation of their intelli-
gibility. Additionally, these dependencies can have several different interpretations.
In [
108
,
109
] dependencies between information objects are exploited for ensuring
consistency and validity. Figure
8.1
illustrates dependencies over the data prod-
ucts of a scientific workflow and such dependencies, apart from being useful for
