Modular Workflow Engine for Distributed Services using Lightweight Java Clients

TL;DR

This paper presents a lightweight, modular workflow engine using Java clients for distributed computing, enabling easy deployment on any computer without administrative rights, and demonstrates its effectiveness in engineering applications.

Contribution

Introduces a novel lightweight client-server framework for distributed computing with minimal setup requirements and robust network failure handling.

Findings

System is easy to deploy without admin rights

Effective in real-world engineering applications

Performance can be enhanced with dedicated file servers

Abstract

In this article we introduce the concept and the first implementation of a lightweight client-server-framework as middleware for distributed computing. On the client side an installation without administrative rights or privileged ports can turn any computer into a worker node. Only a Java runtime environment and the JAR files comprising the workflow client are needed. To connect all clients to the engine one open server port is sufficient. The engine submits data to the clients and orchestrates their work by workflow descriptions from a central database. Clients request new task descriptions periodically, thus the system is robust against network failures. In the basic set-up, data up- and downloads are handled via HTTP communication with the server. The performance of the modular system could additionally be improved using dedicated file servers or distributed network file systems. We demonstrate the design features of the proposed engine in real-world applications from mechanical engineering. We have used this system on a compute cluster in design-of-experiment studies, parameter optimisations and robustness validations of finite element structures.