Visualization of Bioinformatics Workflows for Ease of Understanding and Design Activities

H. V. Byelas, M. A. Swertz

2013

Abstract

Bioinformatics analyses are growing in size and complexity. They are often described as workflows, with the workflow specifications also becoming more complex due to the diversity of data, tools, and computational resources involved. A number of workflow management systems (WMS) have been developed recently to help bioinformaticians in their workflow design activities. Many of these WMS visualize workflows as graphs, where the nodes are analysis steps and the edges are interactions and constraints between analysis steps. These graphs usually represent a data flow of the analysis. We know that in software visualization, similar graphs are used to show a data flow in software systems. However, the WMS do not use any widely accepted standards for workflow visualization, particularly not in the bioinformatics domain. As a result, workflows are visualized in different ways in different WMS and workflows describing the same analysis look different in different WMS. Furthermore, the visualization techniques used in WMS for bioinformatics are quite limited. Here, we argue that applying some of the visual analytics methods and techniques used in software field, such as UML (unified modelling language) diagrams combined with quality metrics, can help to enhance understanding and sharing of the workflow, and ease workflow analysis and design activities.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

V. Byelas H. and A. Swertz M. (2013). Visualization of Bioinformatics Workflows for Ease of Understanding and Design Activities . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms - Volume 1: BIOINFORMATICS, (BIOSTEC 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-35-8, pages 116-121. DOI: 10.5220/0004195301160121

in Bibtex Style

@conference{bioinformatics13,
author={H. V. Byelas and M. A. Swertz},
title={Visualization of Bioinformatics Workflows for Ease of Understanding and Design Activities},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms - Volume 1: BIOINFORMATICS, (BIOSTEC 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={116-121},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004195301160121},
isbn={978-989-8565-35-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms - Volume 1: BIOINFORMATICS, (BIOSTEC 2013)
TI - Visualization of Bioinformatics Workflows for Ease of Understanding and Design Activities
SN - 978-989-8565-35-8
AU - V. Byelas H.
AU - A. Swertz M.
PY - 2013
SP - 116
EP - 121
DO - 10.5220/0004195301160121