Research process automation -- the reliable, efficient, and reproducible
execution of linked sets of actions on scientific instruments, computers, data
stores, and other resources -- has emerged as an essential element of modern
science. We report here on new services within the Globus research data
management platform that enable the specification of diverse research processes
as reusable sets of actions, \emph{flows}, and the execution of such flows in
heterogeneous research environments. To support flows with broad spatial extent
(e.g., from scientific instrument to remote data center) and temporal extent
(from seconds to weeks), these Globus automation services feature: 1) cloud
hosting for reliable execution of even long-lived flows despite sporadic
failures; 2) a simple specification and extensible asynchronous action provider
API, for defining and executing a wide variety of actions and flows involving
heterogeneous resources; 3) an event-driven execution model for automating
execution of flows in response to arbitrary events; and 4) a rich security
model enabling authorization delegation mechanisms for secure execution of
long-running actions across distributed resources. These services permit
researchers to outsource and automate the management of a broad range of
research tasks to a reliable, scalable, and secure cloud platform. We present
use cases for Globus automation services, describe their design and
implementation, present microbenchmark studies, and review experiences applying
the services in a range of applications.

该研究介绍了 Globus 研究数据管理平台中的新服务，该服务可支持将多种研究流程作为可重用的操作集合规范，并在异构研究环境中执行这些流程，从而使研究者能够利用一个可靠、可扩展和安全的云平台自动化管理广泛的研究任务。