[DRMAA-WG] Notes from OGF21 Working Group Session

[Daniel Templeton]

The session at OGF21 went very well.  We had lots of great people in the 
room, so we were actually able to have a useful conversation.  Since I 
was both trying to lead and take notes, my notes are not comprehensive, 
but I think they capture the high points.

* DRMAA next
  - First important milestone is ISV buy-in
  - An important element of a next version is very explicit backwards 
compatibility
  - What effect will DRMAA next have on SAGA and vice versa?
    . It was roughly agreed that if DRMAA next leans towards SAGA, SAGA 
may consider using DRMAA
    . Andre Merzky volunteered to work on a sample integration of DRMAA 
into SAGA
    . The point was made that while SAGA has its place, so does DRMAA.  
Being just a submit/monitor/control API may be an advantage in some cases
  - Resource discovery is an important missing piece
    . Where is my job running?
    . What resources are available for my job to run on?
  - Need to be able to query more info, like the list of submitted jobs 
(even beyond the session boundary)
  - Where does JSDL fit in?
    . On the back end, making DRMAA an API front end of JSDL over HPCP
    . As a mechanism for sharing job templates among applications
  - The general agreement was that rather than a monolithic DRMAA next, 
it would be better to have a series of extension modules for 1.0, and 
then DRMAA next becomes a blessed assembly of those extensions.
    . An obvious first module would be utility functions for converting 
job templates to/from JSDL

Daniel