Exp-WF: A workflow management module for Web-based laboratory information management systems

Specialized laboratory information management systems (LIMS) are widely used by scientific research groups to store and manage experimental data. Smaller research laboratories' LIMS often lack support for automatic task execution, an omission that becomes more critical as experiments become increasingly automated. This thesis describes Exp-WF, a workflow management module specifically designed to be easily incorporated into a typical small-scale LIMS. Scientists describe the execution order of experiments as a workflow model. Exp-WF then automatically selects experiments for execution and dispatches them to the people or machines responsible for performing them. Exp-WF can be incorporated into an existing web-based LIMS in a non-intrusive way by using servlet filter technology to observe user actions and act upon them. Exp-WF uses agent-based technology with asynchronous communication to dispatch tasks to remote machines. This guarantees correctness even if the machines are not available all the time.