Newnode: An R function for visualising workflows
The scientific workflow concept is essentially a pipeline. The method step is the key atomic unit of a scientific pipeline. It consists of inputs, outputs and a rationale for why the step is taken.
A simple way to keep track of the steps, inputs and outputs is shown in Table below:
CLUSTER , STEP , INPUTS , OUTPUTS
A , Step1 , "Input 1, Input 2" , Output 1
A , Step2 , Input 3 , Output 2
B , Step3 , "Output 1, Output 2" , Output 3
The steps and data listed in this way can be visualised. To achieve this an R function was written as part of my PhD project and is distributed in the R package available on Github https://github.com/ivanhanigan/disentangle.
This is the newnode function. The function returns a string of text
written in the dot language which can be rendered in R using the
DiagrammeR package, or the standalone graphviz package. This creates the graph of this pipeline shown in Figure below. Note that a new field was added for Descriptions as these are highly recommended.
