Criticality-Based Task Composition in Distributed Bioinformatics Systems

During task composition, such as can be found in distributed query processing, workflow systems and AI planning, decisions have to be made by the system and possibly by users with respect to how a given problem should be solved. Although there is often more than one correct way of solving a given problem, these multiple solutions do not necessarily lead to the same result. Some researchers are addressing this problem by providing data provenance information. In this paper we propose an approach that assesses the importance of such decisions with respect to the overall result. We present a way of measuring decision criticality and describe its potential use. Real bioinformatics examples are used to illustrate the approach.