Overview
VisTrails is a new system that provides provenance management support for exploratory computational tasks. It combines features of workflow and visualization systems. Similar to workflow systems, it allows the combination of loosely-coupled resources, specialized libraries, and grid and Web services. Similar to some visualization systems, it provides a mechanism for parameter exploration and comparison of different results. But unlike these other systems, VisTrails was designed to manage exploratory processes in which computational tasks evolve over time as a user iteratively formulates and tests hypotheses. A key distinguishing feature of VisTrails is its comprehensive provenance infrastructure that maintains detailed history information about the steps followed in the course of an exploratory task. VisTrails leverages this information to provide novel operations and user interfaces that streamline this process.
VisTrails has been developed for exploratory visualization, but the system is general, and provides functionality in the following areas:
- Flexible provenance architecture.
- Querying and re-using history.
- Support for collaborative exploration.
- Extensibility.
- Scalable derivation of data products, parameter exploration, multi-view and comparative visualization.
Read more about this topic: Vis Trails