Introducing PROOF - A PROcess Orchestration Framework for the Automation of Computational Scientific Workflows and Co-Simulations

Scientists and engineers involved in the design of complex system solutions use computational Workflows and co-simulations to explore, model, and evaluate the behavior of these system solutions. With the help of integration tools, scientists and engineers can avoid the implementation of additional interfaces when coupling different executables and running them as an overall system solution, which hinders their original research or engineering goals. Therefore, a novel framework named PROcess Orchestration Framework (PROOF) for streamlining the creation and automation of computational workflows and co-simulations is introduced in this article. It uses state-of-the-art technologies for automation (e.g., container virtualization) and coordination (e.g., distributed message-oriented middleware). It supports task parallelism and recoverability capabilities by utilizing container orchestration on a distributed computing cluster. PROOF uses a descriptive approach to abstractly create workflows with the help of a scalable and extendable user interface.