[jsdl-wg] application profile proliferation

[Andreas Savva]

[I'll reply in reverse order if you don't mind.]

Joseph Bester wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Donal K. Fellows wrote:
	:
> 
>>> Did the group consider having this as a separate extension child  
>>> of  the jsdl:Application element (independent of the  
>>> POSIXApplication or  HPCProfileApplication)?

We considered a number of different ways, including:
- encapsulating (possibly more than one) POSIXApplication element(s)
inside SPMDApplication
- adding an additional element at the same level as POSIXApplication (as
you mention above)
- putting it outside JobDescription and inside JobDefinition as a
separate general 'parallelism' element
- re-using only the elements from POSIXApplication that we agreed were
relevant to this extension and defining a new Application extension

We decided on the current approach because we thought it was clearer
since it uses the mechanism we put in place for new Application
extensions---it  is a new Application extension so it should replace and
be at the same level as POSIXApplication. It also makes the point that
not all elements from POSIXApplication would actually be useful when,
for example, executing an MPI job.

>>> I think there are some semantic differences between the various   
>>> element definitions.
>> Yes. That's the point. Isn't it a good thing they're in different
>> namespaces? :-)
>>
> 
> Sort of, but it makes implementation of JSDL-consuming services more  
> complicated.

Well, we specifically allow extensibility in application definitions and
people can create their own Application extensions. Element names like
'executable' are generic enough that one should expect to see used in
other extensions with possibly different definitions/explanations. It
may be complicated having jsdl-posix:executable and
jsdl-hpcpa:executable but not more so than having, say, a posixecutable
and an hpcexecutable.

I do understand you point about added complexity, but I'm not sure there
is anything that we can do about it except make clear these are
different definitions.

We can take this discussion offline or we can have a chat on a jsdl
teleconference if you like.

-- 
Andreas Savva
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd