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Note: FireWorks is in beta. Please be cautious about using it in production environments.

FireWorks is a code for defining, managing, and executing scientific workflows. It can be used to automate most types of calculations over arbitrary computing resources, including those that have a queueing system.

# Is FireWorks for me?

FireWorks is intended to be a friendly workflow software that is easy to get started with, but flexible enough to handle complicated use cases.

Some (but not all) of its features include:

- Storage and management of workflows through MongoDB, a noSQL datastore that is flexible and easy to use.
- Ability to distribute calculations over multiple worker nodes, each of which might use different a queueing system and process a different type of calculation.
- Support for dynamic workflows that that react to results programmatically. You can pre-specify what actions to take depending on the output of a job (e.g., terminate a workflow, add a new step, or completely alter the workflow)
- Automatic detection of duplicate sub-workflows - skip duplicated portions between two workflows while still running unique sections
- Loosely-coupled and modular infrastructure that is intentionally hackable. Use some FireWorks components without using everything, and more easily adapt FireWorks to your application.
- Plug-and-play on several large supercomputing clusters and queueing systems (future)
- Monitoring of workflows through a web service (future)
- Package many small jobs into a single large job (useful for running on HPC machines that prefer a small number of large-CPU jobs). (future)

## Limitations

Some limitations of FireWorks include:

- FireWorks has not been stress-tested to hundreds of jobs within a single workflow.
- FireWorks has not been stress-tested to millions of workflows.
- FireWorks does not automatically optimize the distribution of computing tasks over worker nodes (e.g., to minimize data movement or to match jobs to appropriate hardware); you must define such optimizations yourself.
- FireWorks has only been tested on Linux and Macintosh machines (and not Windows).

If you encounter any problems while using FireWorks, please let us know (see Contributing / Contact / Bug Reports).

## Quick information

It can be time-consuming to evaluate whether a workflow software will meet your computing needs from documentation alone. If you just want to know whether FireWorks is a potential solution to your workflow problem, one option is to e-mail a description of your problem to the developer at:

# Changelog

- FireWorks Changelog

# Getting Started!

To get started with FireWorks, we suggest that you follow our core tutorials. These tutorials will set up a central server as well as worker computers. They will also demonstrate how to define and run basic workflows. We expect that completing all of the core tutorials will take between one and three hours. (You might want to get a snack...)

- Installation Tutorial (part 1: the Server)
- Installation Tutorial (part 2: the Worker)
- Defining Jobs using FireTasks
- Creating Workflows
- Dynamic Workflows

To get things running on a shared resource with a queueing system (e.g., a supercomputing center), you will be interested in the following tutorials:

- Launch Rockets through a queue
- Reserving FireWorks upon queue submission
- Installation Notes on various clusters / supercomputing centers

# More!

We recommend that all users read (or at least browse) the following tutorials before using FireWorks seriously:

- Dealing with Failures and Crashes
- Maintaining the FireWorks Database
- Canceling and restarting a Workflow
- Rerunning a FireWork or Workflow
- Configuring Security
- Handling Duplicates Automatically
- Assigning job priority

Python users and Power users will be interested in the following:

- Using Python to command FireWorks
- Modifying the FW Config

Planned future tutorials:

- Detailed tutorial on implementing dynamic jobs
- Detailed tutorial on Script Task
- File movement Task Operations
- Database Task Operations
- Assigning specific FireWorkers to run certain jobs
- Using a web interface to monitor FireWorks
- Checkpoint / restart of jobs
- Using the QueueLauncher outside of FW
- Searching for FireWorks and Workflows
- Logging
- FW design guide, e.g. FireTasks vs Workflows
- JSON vs. YAML and serialization of FW objects (including WF serialiazation as TAR instead of JSON/YAML)

# Contributing / Contact / Bug Reports

Want to see something added or changed? There are many ways to make that a reality! Some ways to get involved are:

- Help us improve the documentation - tell us where you got ‘stuck’ and improve the install process for everyone.
- Let us know if you need support for a queueing system or certain features.
- Point us to areas of the code that are difficult to understand or use.
- Contribute code! If you are interested in this option, please see our contribution guidelines.

The collaborative way to submit questions, issues / bug reports, and all other communication is through the FireWorks Github page. You can also contact:

The list of contributors to FireWorks can be found here.

# License

FireWorks is released under a modified BSD license; the full text can be found here.

# Comprehensive Documentation

Some comprehensive documentation is listed below (only for the brave!)

- Index
- Module Index
- Search Page

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