Apache Taverna

Apache Taverna is an open source software tool for designing and executing workflows, initially created by the myGrid project under the name Taverna Workbench, now a project under the Apache incubator.

Taverna allows users to integrate many different software components, including WSDL SOAP or REST Web services, such as those provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the European Bioinformatics Institute, the DNA Databank of Japan (DDBJ), SoapLab, BioMOBY and EMBOSS. The set of available services is not finite and users can import new service descriptions into the Taverna Workbench.

Taverna Workbench provides a desktop authoring environment and enactment engine for scientific workflows. The Taverna workflow engine is also available separately, as a Java API, command line tool or as a server.

Taverna is used by users in many domains, such as bioinformatics,[9][10] cheminformatics,[11] medicine, astronomy,[12] social science, music, and digital preservation.

Some of the services for the use in Taverna workflows can be discovered through the BioCatalogue - a public, centralised and curated registry of Life Science Web services. Taverna workflows can also be shared with other people through the myExperiment social web site for scientists. BioCatalogue and myExperiment are another two product from the myGrid consortium.

Taverna is used in over 350 organizations around the world, both academic and commercial. As of 2011, there have been over 80,000 downloads of Taverna across different versions.