  Methods for the automatic composition of services into executable workflows
need detailed knowledge about the application domain,in particular about the
available services and their behavior in terms of input/output data
descriptions. In this paper we discuss how the EMBRACE data and methods
ontology (EDAM) can be used as background knowledge for the composition of
bioinformatics workflows. We show by means of a small example domain that the
EDAM knowledge facilitates finding possible workflows, but that additional
knowledge is required to guide the search towards actually adequate solutions.
We illustrate how the ability to flexibly formulate domain-specific and
problem-specific constraints supports the work ow development process.
