Towards Build-Time Interoperability of Workflow Definition Languages

As the number and complexity of workflow definition languages grows, ensuring interoperability between them becomes more difficult, with most effort being concentrated on achieving run-time interoperability. The contribution of this paper is to argue for an alternative approach-with interoperation being achieved during build-time, through the use of what we term an intermediate workflow representation (IWR) format, with this format acting as a mediator to carry out language-to-language conversions. In this paper we identify the requirements of such an approach, with the main benefit being that legacy workflows, defined in different workflow definition languages, might be used in conjunction-and in a fashion that is seamless to the user.