Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 4, numbers 1 and 2, 2012 // View article

Facilitating Bioinformatics Research through a Mobile Cloud with Trusted Data Provenance

Authors:
Jinhui Yao
Jingyu Zhang
Shiping Chen
Chen Wang
David Levy
Qing Liu

Keywords: Cloud Computing,Accountability,Service Oriented Architecture,Mobile Cloud,Data Provenance

Abstract:
Cloud provides a cheap yet reliable outsourcing model for anyone who needs scalable computing resources. Together with the Cloud, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows the construction of scientific workflows to bring together various scientific computing tools offered as services in the Cloud, to answer complex research questions. In those scientific workflows, certain critical steps need the participation of research personnel or experts. It is highly desirable that scientists have easy access, such as mobile devices, to the workflows running in the Cloud. Furthermore, since the participants in this cross-domain collaboration barely trust each other, achieving reliable data provenance becomes a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a concept of mobile-cloud by combining mobile and cloud together in a bioinformatics research application scenario. A mobile-cloud framework is developed, which facilitates the use of mobile devices to manipulate and interact with the scientific workflows running in the Cloud. The Mobile Cloud system acts as a trusted third party to record provenance data submitted by the participating services during the workflow execution. We have implemented a prototype which allows the bioinformatics workflow design and participation using mobile devices. We prove the concept of mobile-cloud with the prototype and conducted performance evaluation for the significant points of the bioinformatics workflow.Cloud provides a cheap yet reliable outsourcing model for anyone who needs scalable computing resources. Together with the Cloud, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows the construction of scientific workflows to bring together various scientific computing tools offered as services in the Cloud, to answer complex research questions. In those scientific workflows, certain critical steps need the participation of research personnel or experts. It is highly desirable that scientists have easy access, such as mobile devices, to the workflows running in the Cloud. Furthermore, since the participants in this cross-domain collaboration barely trust each other, achieving reliable data provenance becomes a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a concept of mobile-cloud by combining mobile and cloud together in a bioinformatics research application scenario. A mobile-cloud framework is developed, which facilitates the use of mobile devices to manipulate and interact with the scientific workflows running in the Cloud. The Mobile Cloud system acts as a trusted third party to record provenance data submitted by the participating services during the workflow execution. We have implemented a prototype which allows the bioinformatics workflow design and participation using mobile devices. We prove the concept of mobile-cloud with the prototype and conducted performance evaluation for the significant points of the bioinformatics workflow.

Pages: 52 to 62

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2660