The Taverna team are pleased to announce the release of Taverna Server 2.4.

This release is a feature-complete version of the Taverna 2 Server that is provided as a basis for deployments of server-ized Taverna in a multi-user environment. This version of the Server is based on the Taverna 2.4 codebase. Detailed documentation for the Server is available on-line.

In addition to its improved performance, this release supports a number of new key features:

• Based on Taverna 2.4
• Multiple users, with strong separation between them.
• Limited persistence over service restarts, depending on exact deployment.
• Workflow run introspection capabilities; clients can ask the server what inputs they should supply and what outputs were provided.
• Workflow run termination notifications through multiple mechanisms (RSS feed, email, SMS, twitter, etc. depending on deployment).
• Security, both of access to the service and access by the workflow runs to other services.
• Administrative REST interface including resource accounting
• Streaming of large files both for download and upload.

This is in addition to the features supported by the previous version of Taverna 2 Server:

• Upload and Execution of arbitrary Taverna 2 workflows
• Access to Workflow’s Interim Output Files; no need to wait for the workflow to finish if the results are available sooner
• Safe File Management for handling results; workflows cannot interfere with each others files
• Simple mechanism for Removal of Expired Workflows
• Support for both RESTful and SOAP APIs, for easier tooling
• JMX-based Management API

A Ruby Gem for interfacing to the Server via its REST interface is available. A Virtual Machine and Demonstrator Interface will be released soon.

Specific Issues Addressed in This Release

• TAVSERV-224 Ability to pass configuration parameters to the command line
  executor
• TAVSERV-226 Odd webapp authentication behaviour!
• TAVSERV-228 Wrong title and missing documentation link on index page

Future improvements

There remain a number of known-missing features; notably these include access to:

• Provenance Database
• Workflow Execution Model

Installation

Download Taverna Server 2.4 war and follow the installation instructions.

• Taverna Server 2.4 war
  • MD5: 02ca855484dee31737264a8d80f8dcbc
• Taverna Server 2.4 war source code
  • MD5: ab3f73a2e584aa1caf8a41fe12f1b522
• Taverna Server 2.4 full distribution
  • MD5: 149bf8620071af931ae0893bd2c1928b

System Requirements

Operating system

The Server can currently be installed on Linux and MAC OS.

Java

You will need a Java 6 installation. You can download Java from Sun Microsystems.

WebApp container

You will need a suitable servlet container.

The Server has been developed using Tomcat 6.0.26 as the servlet container, but other versions of Tomcat are known to work (back to at least 6.0.20) and other containers may also function correctly as no Tomcat-specific APIs are used in the deployable code. We welcome feedback on which containers work, as well as on how to configure them (if they are not Tomcat versions).