[DRMAA-WG] DRMAA2: Partial time stamp discussion

[Peter Tröger]

Dear all,

this discussion thread is intended to clarify the future of partial  
time stamps in DRMAA2. This feature of DRMAA 1.0 allows the expression  
of relative time information (e.g. "Start the job on next Monday"). It  
is used for the job template attributes "startTime" and "deadlineTime".

The DRMAA2 survey clearly showed that this is an unnecessary feature  
from the user perspective. From our actual knowledge, no  
implementation beside SGE supports it. The standard implementation  
strategy instead is to support complete date / time information in the  
DRMAA string format, which is not compatible to anything.

The Condor experience report discusses this to a great extend, and  
proposes ISO8601 resp. RFC822 as new data format for time information.  
The following questions need to be clarified:

Is there any unknown use case / existing application for the partial  
time stamp feature ? Does it prevent us from dropping it ?

What time standard could act as replacement ?

Is this time standard mappable to all relevant programming languages  
(and their native date / time representation) ?

Is this time standard mappable to all relevant DRM systems ?

Can the standard also support the expression of an amount of time  
(TimeAmount IDL type, used  for limit values in job templates) ?

Please post the perspective from your favorite DRM system /  
programming language.

Thanks,
Peter.