Abstract
Background Many open-source workflow systems have made bioinformatics data analysis procedures portable. Sharing these workflows provides researchers easy access to high-quality analysis methods without the requirement of computational expertise. However, published workflows are not always guaranteed to be reliably reusable. Therefore, a system is needed to lower the cost of sharing workflows in a reusable form.
Results We introduce Yevis, a system to build a workflow registry that automatically validates and tests workflows to be published. The validation and test are based on the requirements we defined for a workflow being reusable with confidence. Yevis runs on GitHub and Zenodo and allows workflow hosting without the need of dedicated computing resources. A Yevis registry accepts workflow registration via a GitHub pull request, followed by an automatic validation and test process for the submitted workflow. As a proof of concept, we built a registry using Yevis to host workflows from a community to demonstrate how a workflow can be shared while fulfilling the defined requirements.
Conclusions Yevis helps in the building of a workflow registry to share reusable workflows without requiring extensive human resources. By following Yevis’s workflow-sharing procedure, one can operate a registry while satisfying the reusable work-flow criteria. This system is particularly useful to individuals or communities that want to share workflows but lacks the specific technical expertise to build and maintain a workflow registry from scratch.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Revised overall representation.
List of abbreviations
- API
- Application Programming Interface;
- CI/CD
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery;
- CWL
- Common Workflow Language;
- DDBJ
- Bioinformation and DDBJ Center;
- DNA
- Deoxyribonucleic Acid;
- DOI
- Digital Object Identifier;
- FAIR
- Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable;
- GA4GH
- Global Alliance for Genomics and Health;
- HTTP
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol;
- ID
- Identifier;
- REST
- Representational State Transfer;
- TRS
- Tool Registry Service;
- UI
- User Interface;
- URI
- Uniform Resource Identifier;
- URL
- Uniform Resource Locator;
- WDL
- Workflow Description Language;
- WES
- Workflow Execution Service;