[jsdl-wg] Wildcards in data staging elements

[Jonathan Giddy]

Bernd Schuller wrote:
> Dear jsdl folks,
>
>
> what is the opinion on using JSDL DataStaging elements that contain wildcards?
> Or even something more powerful such as filesets with includes and excludes,
> as in Apache Ant?
>
>   
This is quite a common requirement, especially for legacy codes that 
create multiple output files or use output file names that include the 
process id or similar.

I can see two major problems with wildcards:
1. It can very difficult to get the underlying tools to deal with the 
wildcards correctly, or at all. This is particularly the case for output 
transfers where the only way to obtain the output files is to specify 
their names to the underlying middleware explicitly.
2. It creates a dependence on the filesystem that is not there 
currently. I can currently look at a JSDL file and know exactly the 
steps that will be performed. Adding wildcards means I also need to see 
the filesystems involved in order to know what the JSDL is actually 
going to do.

Jon.

-- 
Jonathan Giddy
Grid Technologies Co-ordinator
Welsh e-Science Centre
Cardiff University
ph (029) 2087 9153