OpenWP: Combining annotation language and workflow environments for porting existing applications on grids

Many Industrial companies are looking for programming environments to port their existing applications onto the grid. Workflow environments are an appealing solution for them as they match the architectural features of grids (hierarchy, heterogeneity, dynamism). However,current workflow environments require from programmers significant efforts to adapt existing applications. In this paper, we propose the OpenWP programming and runtime environment, in order to ease the adaptation and execution of existing applications onto grids. OpenWP essentially allows the programmer:1) to express the parallelism and distribution in existing codes using directives and 2) to execute the applications on grids using existing workflow engines. This paper presents the OpenWP environment in details and evaluates its performance with a non trivial industrial mesher application used by an aerospace company.