Abstract

Today, research projects in molecular biology rely on increasingly complex combinations of computational methods to handle the data that is produced in the life science laboratories. A variety of bioinformatics databases, algorithms, and tools is available for specific analysis tasks. Their combination to solve a specific biological question defines more or less complex analysis workflows or processes. Software systems that facilitate the systematic development and automation of such processes have begun to enjoy great popularity in the community. In this entry we give a survey of popular bioinformatics services and workflow management systems. Furthermore, we present a case study in which we realize small, yet typical analysis processes in two different frameworks, namely, Taverna and Bio-jETI.