Scientific workflow management system
VisTrails is a scientific workflow management system developed at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah that provides support for data exploration and visualization. It is written in Python and employs Qt via PyQt bindings. The system is open source, released under the GPL v2 license. The pre-compiled versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux come with an installer and several packages, including VTK, matplotlib, and ImageMagick. VisTrails also supports user-defined packages.
Overview.
VisTrails is a new system that provides provenance management support for exploratory
computational tasks. It combines features of workflow and visualization systems. Similar to
workflow systems, it allows the combination of loosely coupled resources, specialized libraries,
and grid and Web services. Similar to some visualization systems, it provides a mechanism
for parameter exploration and comparison of different results. But unlike these other systems,
VisTrails was designed to manage exploratory processes in which computational tasks evolve
over time as a user iteratively formulates and tests hypotheses. A key distinguishing feature of
VisTrails is its comprehensive provenance infrastructure that maintains detailed history information
about the steps followed in the course of an exploratory task. VisTrails leverages this
information to provide novel operations and user interfaces that streamline this process.
VisTrails has been developed for exploratory visualization, but the system is general, and provides
functionality in the following areas:
History.
VisTrails is the result of a collaborative effort between computer scientists Cláudio Silva and Juliana Freire. Initial development began in 2004 by graduate students at the University of Utah. Although the first prototypes were implemented in C++, the current version of VisTrails is written in Python. The first public release was in September 2007.
Functionality.
A common use for VisTrails is scientific visualization. Visualizations generated as part of a workflow are rendered in a spreadsheet-style interface, allowing multiple visualizations from different versions of a workflow to be viewed and compared simultaneously. The VisTrails spreadsheet currently supports VTK and HTML rendering.
VisTrails supports four basic modes, or views. Each view interacts with the underlying workflow in a different way.
Commercial variants.
In 2007, the University of Utah formed VisTrails, Inc., a spinoff company intended to commercialize VisTrails technology. Development for the free version of VisTrails is currently funded by the University of Utah and VisTrails, Inc. The company's first product is a plugin for the 3D modeling software Maya. While the main VisTrails distribution is free software, the VisTrails plugin for Maya is distributed under a closed-source/proprietary license.