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There are so many alternatives, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 Any information about which lan

There are so many alternatives, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 Any information about which language is leading the field?

jkh1 7y ago
Which field? In the absence of any constraint, the choice of workflow management system is down to individual preferences. Note that the goal of CWL is to be a standard workflow language not a workflow management system. That is, it is concerned purely by how to precisely describe a workflow, not by how it should be implemented which is the task of a workflow management system. The diversity of workflow management systems starts to be recognized as an obstacle to re-use and reproducibility of scientific workflows. Having different systems implementing a standard language would help get around this issue. Several workflow management systems used in bioinformatics have or are implementing support for CWL.
maddyboo 7y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- jkh1 7y ago
  This is not exactly true in this case as before CWL there was no standard, only languages tied to particular implementations.
- snak 7y ago
  Came to the comments looking for this.
ibern 7y ago
Right now I'd say it's in competition with Workflow Description Language (WDL), Nextflow, and maybe Snakemake. CWL seems to be more popular than WDL, as far as I can tell, but Nextflow is probably more popular than both.
- hhas01 7y ago
  Skimming the WDL “Quick Start Guide” (https://software.broadinstitute.org/wdl/documentation/quickstart https://software.broadinstitute.org/wdl/documentation/quicks...) to get an overview, it’s like watching a snake eat its tail. You’d think a narrative in this problem space would at least have a clear beginning, middle, and end. At least the Nextwave homepage (https://www.nextflow.io/ https://www.nextflow.io/) starts with a clean concrete written example, even if it does leave you to deduce its actual meaning for yourself.

There are so many alternatives, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410848 Any information about which language is leading the field?

jkh1 7y ago

Which field? In the absence of any constraint, the choice of workflow management system is down to individual preferences. Note that the goal of CWL is to be a standard workflow language not a workflow management system. That is, it is concerned purely by how to precisely describe a workflow, not by how it should be implemented which is the task of a workflow management system. The diversity of workflow management systems starts to be recognized as an obstacle to re-use and reproducibility of scientific workflows. Having different systems implementing a standard language would help get around this issue. Several workflow management systems used in bioinformatics have or are implementing support for CWL.

maddyboo 7y ago

https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

jkh1 7y ago
This is not exactly true in this case as before CWL there was no standard, only languages tied to particular implementations.
snak 7y ago
Came to the comments looking for this.

ibern 7y ago

Right now I'd say it's in competition with Workflow Description Language (WDL), Nextflow, and maybe Snakemake. CWL seems to be more popular than WDL, as far as I can tell, but Nextflow is probably more popular than both.

hhas01 7y ago
Skimming the WDL “Quick Start Guide” (https://software.broadinstitute.org/wdl/documentation/quickstart https://software.broadinstitute.org/wdl/documentation/quicks...) to get an overview, it’s like watching a snake eat its tail. You’d think a narrative in this problem space would at least have a clear beginning, middle, and end. At least the Nextwave homepage (https://www.nextflow.io/ https://www.nextflow.io/) starts with a clean concrete written example, even if it does leave you to deduce its actual meaning for yourself.