[jsdl-wg] Questions about JSDL specification

[Alain Roy]

Hello,

I have been reading the JSDL specification, and I have a few 
questions about it.

1) I want to make sure that I understand "support" and "satisfy" as 
defined on page 7. If a system can parse a JSDL document, then it 
supports it, and if it can do everything requested by the JSDL 
document, then it satisfied it. Is that correct?

2) Just to make sure I understand support, when it says "The JSDL 
core element set contains the semantics for elements that are defined 
by JSDL 1.0. All elements MUST be supported by JSDL 1.0 compliant 
consuming systems.", that simply means that they need to be parsed, 
not that the need to be accepted, correct?

3) ApplicationName identifies the executable. I don't understand 
where the executable comes from. Do we expect that the underlying 
system can figure out which program to run from the name and version, 
and that it is pre-staged? Can applications bring their executable 
with them by staging it? Am I supposed to use the POSIXApplication 
element? I'm confused how this fits together.

3) When I specify the operating system: how do I specify linux 
version? Kernel version? Distro + version? Is it dependent on the 
underlying system?

3) IndividualCPUCount allows me to specify a range in terms of 
double: what does this mean? For example, if I specify that I want 
3.14 CPUs, it's a legal specification, but I don't know what it 
means. Ditto for IndividualPhysicalMemory and IndividualVirtualMemory 
and IndividualDiskSpace.

3) I don't undersatnd IndividualNetworkBandwidth: bandwidth to where? 
Does this refer just to the local NIC? What if there are multiple NICs?

4) I'm confused how IndividualDiskSpace interacts with the filesystem 
element. The FileSystem element specifies how much disk space is 
needed on a particular file system: the IndividualDiskSpace says 
something about disk space, but not about where the disk space is 
located. Which disk space is it? What does it mean if I specify a 
FileSystem and IndividualDiskSpace?

5) I don't understand the difference between IndividualCPUCount and 
TotalCPUCount. Can I think of it as the number of CPUs on a single 
node, and the total number needed across all nodes? Or does it mean 
something different?

6) When I stage files, the destination might be a filesystem on NFS. 
If I'm running many jobs at the same time, the files might clobber 
each other unless I give the files unique names: is the user 
responsible for doing so, or is there some way to specify a unique 
identifier in the file name? For example, in Condor I can say 
something like File.$(Process) to get a unique filename based on the job id.

Thanks for any assistance in understanding!

-alain