The 2.0 release contains a major architectural overhaul from previous releases.
Further information on the new Kepler architecture can be found at http://kepler-project.org
Scientists in a variety of disciplines (e.g., biology, ecology, astronomy) need access to scientific data and flexible means for executing complex analyses on those data. Such analyses can be captured as 'scientific workflows' in which the flow of data from one analytical step to another is captured in a formal workflow language. The Kepler project's overall goal is to produce an open-source scientific workflow system that allows scientists to design scientific workflows and execute them efficiently using emerging Grid-based approaches to distributed computation.
Kepler is currently based on the Ptolemy II system for heterogeneous, concurrent modeling and design. This version of Kepler is based on Ptolemy II version 8.0. Ptolemy II was developed by the members of the Ptolemy project at UC Berkley. Although not originally intended for scientific workflows, it provides a mature platform for building and executing workflows, and supports multiple models of computation. For more information on Ptolemy II and for detailed documentation that is applicable to Kepler, see the Ptolemy web site at http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu.
The Kepler project is a cross-project collaboration to develop open source tools for Scientific Workflows. The project was initiated by members of the Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge Project (SEEK) and the Scientific Data Management (SDM) projects by researchers at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS, UC Santa Barbara) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC, UC San Diego). It has since attracted contributions from many projects across many scientific disciplines (see http://kepler-project.org for the current list of sponsoring projects).
Kepler is an open-source project. Contributing members jointly determine the goals for Kepler as well as contribute to the design and implementation of the software system. We welcome contributions and encourage other people and projects to join as contributing members.
Contributions to this work are welcome. Please see the Kepler web site (above) for details on how to contribute.
See the "Help" menu for detailed documentation. Installation information can be found in the INSTALL.txt file in the root of the kepler directory.
Note that Kepler is built using Ptolemy II from UC Berkeley. Please check the Ptolemy web site (http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemyII) for details and documentation. Ptolemy source code is included with this release inside the kepler.jar file, and Ptolemy documentation is inside the ptII/build/ptolemy-doc.jar. (jar files can be opened with WinZip or any other software for unzipping compressed files.)
When using the application installers, there are different launchers for each operating system. On Mac OS X, Kepler is placed, by default, in /Applications. You can navigate there after the installer completes and drag the Kepler icon to the dock for easy execution. On Windows, the installer will give you an option to create an icon in your start menu and/or on the desktop. On Linux, navigate to your installation directory and launch the kepler.sh shell script.
Currently, Macintosh version of several platform specific applications do not exist for non-Intel Macs (e.g. GDAL code). Thus certain workflows that call these applications will not run on older Macs. The RExpression actor has been modified to always create PDF graphics files which are displayed using the Macintosh Preview application.
This software is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California; see the 'copyright.txt' file for details. Portions of this software (individual files) may be copyrighted by other organizations: see the individual source files for each copyright owner's statement.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under awards 0225676 for SEEK, 0225673 (AWSFL008-DS3) for GEON, 0619060 for REAP, and 0722079 for Kepler/CORE; by the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FC02-01ER25486 for SciDAC/SDM; and by DARPA under Contract No. F33615-00-C-1703 for Ptolemy.
This work was conducted with logistical support from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a Center funded by NSF (Grant #DEB-0553768), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California.
Ptolemy receives support in part from the Center for Hybrid and Embedded software Systems (CHESS) at UC Berkeley, which receives support from the National Science Foundation (NSF award #CCR-0225610), the State of California Micro Program, and the following companies: Agilent, DGIST, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Infineon, Microsoft, and Toyota.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Please see the license.txt file for license exclusions.