Title: SWFSim: development and use of GUI-based scientific workflow simulator

Authors: Harshadkumar B. Prajapati; Vipul A. Shah

Addresses: Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Technology, Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad 387001, Gujarat, India ' Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad 387001, Gujarat, India

Abstract: Since the beginning of grid computing, solving the problem of scheduling of dependent tasks application, which is known as scientific workflow and represented as a directed acyclic graph (DAG), has remained an active area of research due to its NP-complete nature. However, researchers find difficulties in working on workflow scheduling aspect due to complexities associated with uses of a real grid environment or a simulation tool that is not user-friendly. Thus, there is a need of user-friendly and extensible simulation environment supporting scheduling of workflow application, and to answer that limitation, we have put our efforts to develop a GUI-based scientific WorkFlow simulator (SWFSim). This article describes design and implementation of modular, extensible, user-friendly, portable DAG application scheduling simulator that can be used for studying static scheduling algorithms. Furthermore, the article also demonstrates the versatility of SWFSim by implementing and experimenting well-known and widely used scheduling algorithms.

Keywords: application scheduler; DAG scheduler; directed acyclic graph; dependent task scheduling; simulation; workflow scheduling; GUI; graphical user interface; scientific workflow; grid computing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPS.2016.080335

International Journal of Planning and Scheduling, 2016 Vol.2 No.3, pp.179 - 209

Received: 20 Mar 2015
Accepted: 27 Nov 2015
Published online: 15 Nov 2016 *

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