An Architecture to Enhance Collaboration in Scientific Software Product Line

Different approaches have been used to support scientific workflows, including Software Product Line (SPL). A scientific workflow is a mechanism used to represent and perform activities in scientific experiments. However, the design of this mechanism is not a trivial task, and ad-hoc approaches usually create barriers in the domain of e-Science. Lack of support for collaboration issues among scientists can be regarded as one of the main challenges to the scientific endeavour. To tackle this issue Collaborative PL-Science was designed to enhance collaboration among geographically distributed scientists. This paper describes the use of collaborative elements in a Scientific Software Product Line. These elements are designed to create opportunities for collaboration among scientists and contextualize them on their own activities. Case studies were carried out focusing on collaboration elements in order to evaluate the proposed solution.