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title: The Floability Project
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<img src=images/logos/floability-gray.png alt="Floability" class="logotitle">

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<p>
The <b>Floability Project</b> is an NSF funded research project to enable the rapid
and portable deployment of notebooks expressing complex scientific workflows across
a wide range of cyberinfrastructure.  The key technical challenge is that
<b>workflows are incomplete</b>: the code by itself cannot be moved between facilities
without accurately capturing the software dependencies, required datasets,
and capabilities of the underlying cluster hardware.  Our research team at
the University of Notre Dame, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Illinois
is developing solutions to discover, express, and deploy the complete set of
dependencies needed for complex scientific workflows.
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<p>
<font size=+2>A plain workflow by itself is not portable across facilities:</font>
</p>
<img src=images/cartoons/workflow-fail.png width=80%>

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<p>
<font size=+2>A complete workflow is captured in a <b>floability backpack</b></font>:
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<table>
  <tr>
    <td><img src=images/cartoons/floability-backpack.png>
    <td>
      <ul>
	<li> A notebook containing the the scientific workflow.
	<li> The software dependencies needed at the manager and worker.
	<li> A snapshot or specification of the datasets needed for execution.
	<li> A specification of the cluster resources (nodes, memory, GPU, etc) to run the workflow.
      </ul>
    </td>
</table>

<p>
<font size=+2>The floability software deploys a backpack into an HPC facility:</font>
</p>
<img src=images/cartoons/floability-deploy.png width=80%>

<hr>

<p>
Floability builds on a variety of open source technologies, including <a href=jupyter.org>Jupyter</a> to provide interactive notebook environments, <a href=https://cdmdicewebprd01.dpu.depaul.edu/projects/advancedcontainers/>Sciunit</a> to discover software and data dependencies, <a href=https://ccl.cse.nd.edu/software/taskvine/>TaskVine</a> to express and execute workflows, and <a href=https://conda-forge.org>Conda Forge</a> to provision and deploy software environments.
</p>

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<table width=100%>
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    <td><img src="images/logos/nsf.png" width=128></td>
    <td>This project is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant OAC-2411436,
      <a href=https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2411436>CSSI Frameworks: From Notebook to Workflow and Back Again</a></td>
  </tr>
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