# Bio::EnsEMBL::Hive project
#
# Copyright Team Ensembl
# You may distribute this package under the same terms as perl itself

Contact Jessica Severin on implemetation/design detail: jessica@ebi.ac.uk
Contact Ewan Birney on EnsEMBL in general: birney@sanger.ac.uk

Summary:
  This is a distributed processing system based on 'autonomous agents' and
  Hive behavioural structure of Honey Bees .  It implements all functionality of both
  data-flow graphs and block-branch diagrams which should allow it to codify
  any program, algorithm, or parallel processing job control system.  It is
  not bound to any processing 'farm' system and can be adapted to any GRID.
  It builds on the design of the Ensembl Pipeline and presently uses 
  Bio::EnsEMBL::Pipeline::RunnableDB perl wrapper objects as nodes/blocks in 
  the graphs but could be adapted more generally.

11 March, 2005 : Jessica Severin
  Project is reaching a very stable state.  New 'node' object Bio::EnsEMBL::Hive::Process
  allows for independence from Ensembl Pipeline and provides extended process functionality
  to manipulate hive job objects, branch, modify hive graphs, create jobs, and other hive
  process specific tasks.  Some of this extended 'Process' API may still evolve.

7 June, 2004 : Jessica Severin
  This project is under active development and should be classified as pre-alpha
  Most of the design has been settled and I'm in the process of implementing the details
  but entire objects could disappear or drastically change as I approach the end.
  Watch this space for further developments

11 March, 2005 : Jessica Severin