# ESRF Workflow System (Ewoks)

## Motivation

The main goal of Ewoks is to automate data processing and experiments at large-scale facilities
as well as making data processing more scientific (reproducible) and [FAIR](https://www.go-fair.org) (traceable).

Ewoks is not yet another [workflow management system](https://s.apache.org/existing-workflow-systems).
To ensure the longevity of workflows and their implementation, Ewoks was designed to be a
_meta workflow system_. This allows workflows to be isolated from the underlying software technologies
used to execute and manage them.

## Features

The _meta workflow_ approach allows for supporting a diverse set of use cases tailored to individual
scientists on one end of the spectrum and large-scale facilities on the other end.

* automated workflows distributed on a compute cluster
* interactive worfkflows run as a desktop application
* create, manage and execute worfklows as a web service
* workflows with loops and conditional links
* workflow tasks written in Python or defined by command line tools
* parallel execution of tasks within the same workflow
* job scheduling for integration in other systems (acquisition control, data portal)

## How to cite Ewoks?

[![][doi-shield]][doi]

[doi]: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6075054
[doi-shield]: https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.6075054.svg

## What is Ewoks?

Ewoks is a collection of Python projects to design and run data processing via workflows.

The Ewoks ecosystem is composed of:

- **ewoks** to submit and execute workflows with any supported execution engine, be it locally or remotely.
- **ewokscore** that defines the specification of Ewoks workflows.
- **ewoksweb**: a web service to create, edit and execute workflows.
- several bindings for workflow management systems, depending on the use case.
- several **ewoksapps** exists that define workflows and tasks for specific domains (ex: `tomwer` for tomography, `ewoksxrpd` for X-Ray powder diffraction data processing).

:::{admonition} Example
:class: tip

Ewoks is used at ESRF beamlines to azimuthally integrate diffraction images automatically during acquisition.

**But it can do much more!** See the [task catalog](tasks/index.md) for a list of possible operations (to be expanded soon with a workflow catalog).
:::

:::{toctree}
:hidden:

getting_started
tasks/index
related
press
:::