Overview over flowGuide's Functionality
The different components of flowGuide allow you to quickly and accurately use complex engineering workflows. At the same time they guarantee optimum flexibility and unlimited portability of the software and its workflows. The most important software modules at a glance:
The Quick-GUI
New workflows are quickly and efficiently parameterized in the Quick-GUI. Its panel shows you at one glance the input parameters required for your engineering process. You can feel confident not to have forgotten anything when preparing your calculation run. Before starting a workflow you can store its parameter set in a parameter file. The advantage is that you can easily reproduce old calculations at any time or reuse them with modified parameters.
The Workflow Monitor
In the Workflow Monitor you have full control over the workflows you have started. You can see all processes there, whether already terminated or still running. You can monitor and stop locally executed workflows as well as workflows that have been sent to a batch system. The Workflow Monitor reports problems that occur during your calculations. In addition, log files exist that contain additional information.
The Workflow Engine
The Workflow Engine executes the workflow. As an alternative, it translates the workflow completely or partially in shell or perl scripts. These scripts can then be sent to other hosts or to a batch system where they are executed. flowGuide allows you to strictly separate the description of a process flow from the technical details of its execution. Important execution parameters, like location and mode of execution, frequently modified configuration parameters (e.g. program version, etc) are stored in separate configuration files. The actual process flow remains untouched when maintaining the workflow. Thus, flowGuide allows you to maintain your workflows in a convenient and efficient way and to port them on any platform without any problems.