Site Announcement: Public beta of Taverna 2 is released

Taverna 2 beta 1 the public beta for Taverna 2 is now available for download from http://www.mygrid.org.uk. Taverna 2 itself is scheduled for release in December 2008.

Taverna 2 workflows have new capabilities but you can still run existing Taverna 1 workflows in Taverna 2.

Issue Reporting

If you notice any problems with Taverna 2 beta 1 that are not included in the issues then please report them on the taverna-users mailing list (see http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/taverna/taverna-mailing-lists/)

Increased Functionality

Taverna 2 beta 1 (http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/taverna/taverna-2/taverna-2b1-documentation) has greatly improved functionality over Taverna 1. It includes:

   * An improved user interface
   * A configurable flexible activity (service) palette
   * A new graphical workflow editor including
         o Drag and drop of activities into the workflow
         o Graphical creation/deletion of input and output ports
         o Graphical creation/deletion of links
         o Activity selection by clicking
         o Expansion of ports on individual activities
         o Expansion of individual nested workflows
         o Zooming
         o Unlimited undo and redo of edits
   * A greatly improved enactor offering
         o Pipelining of data from iterative calls of an activity so
           that subsequent activities are started as soon as possible
         o Streaming of data from individual calls of activities so
           subsequent activities can start
         o Production of output results as soon as possible
         o Support for WSRF services
         o Error reporting to allow traceback and debugging of problems
         o Error resilience so that one faulty piece of data does not
           stop a workflow run
   * A contextual view to show and edit information about an activity
   * A graphical interface for user preferences - including the
     default set of activities
   * Improved monitoring of workflow enactment
         o Monitoring of iterations of activities
         o Progress viewing within nested workflows
   * Support for URLs in local workers
   * Customization of local workers as workflow-specific beanshells
   * Saving/closing of all workflows
   * Opening of multiple workflows in one go
   * Cyclic dependency detection within workflows
   * Expansion into nested workflows using the Workflow Explorer

Installation

For details on how to install and run Taverna 2 beta 1 please see the download documentation at http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/taverna/taverna-2/download-taverna-2b1

License

Taverna 2 beta 1 is licensed under the the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 2.1.

Issues and Future Roadmap

There are some known issues (http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/taverna/taverna-2/taverna-2b1-documentation/taverna-2b1-issues/) with Taverna 2 beta 1. A roadmap (http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/taverna/taverna-2/taverna-2b1-documentation/taverna-2b1-roadmap/) describes our plans to solve them and, also, to increase Taverna 2's functionality.