Concepts

FAST-HEP separates the scientific description of an analysis from the implementations and computing infrastructure used to execute it.

An analysis begins with a workflow description. Flow validates and normalises that description, resolves registered capabilities and dependencies, constructs a logical graph, and produces an execution plan before runtime execution begins.

The following pages describe the main concepts behind this process.

Core concepts#

Workflow language#

How analyses are described in workflow.yaml, including datasets, sources, analysis operations, outputs, and rendering.

Compilation and execution#

How Flow turns a workflow description into a logical graph and execution plan, and how that plan separates scientific workflow semantics from runtime execution.

Operations and specs#

How workflow operations expose their parameters, inputs, outputs, dependencies, and runtime behaviour through stable contracts.

Profiles and registries#

How capabilities are discovered and selected, and how profiles compose registries for different analysis and execution contexts.

Execution environments#

How the same execution plan can be mapped onto different backends, computing resources, and provisioning strategies.

Analysis repositories#

How complete analyses can be organised into reproducible repositories containing workflows, configuration, custom code, data references, and supporting material.

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