A workflow management platform for media analysis in BPEL-based grid environments

Motivation: In many media applications, there is a need to index very large amounts of audiovisual content in a minimum of time. Due to their scalability, Grid infrastructures are well suited for processing a large number of media files. Within the BMBF-funded research project MediaGrid, a distributed media analysis platform is currently being developed. It enables its users to analyze and index large quantities of multimedia data within a short amount of time. Grid services as distributed processing units and BPEL4Grid as a scientific BPEL-based workflow system are the foundations of the platform. To reduce the interface complexity and make the platform user-friendly, additional components have been added. This paper describes the architecture of the media analysis platform and the compon ents involved. Results: An architecture offering a generic job interface in combination with an extensible BPEL repository is presented. The complexity of the system is hidden from the user and shifted to the platform provider. Thereby, the barrier to use the system as an end user is lowered to a minimum. Availability: Parts of the components that are combined to form the media analysis platform already exist (for instance, the generic job interface and the BPEL engine). Further enhancements such as the BPEL Repository, the BPEL Adapter Repository and the Mapping and Invocation Component will be integrated into the platform and will be made available in 2011.