[ogsa-bes-wg] Questions and potential changes to BES, as seen from HPC Profile point-of-view

[Donal K. Fellows]

Marvin Theimer wrote:
> I don't agree with the "there is no hope" argument.  A set of JSDL
> documents can describe things like clusters from the point-of-view of
> available resource descriptions.  A few extensions to jsdl will allow
> the most common forms of cross-cutting job requirements, such as "all
> cpus must be the same".  You can probably hit 80-90% of the common cases
> with this incremental approach.  If a well-defined way is included to
> allow evolution and extension then the simple design doesn't prevent
> future forward progress, yet still enables current progress.

I agree with the above paragraph, but I'd like to point out that the
80-90% of cases above probably should refer to distinct cases, and that
it will in fact cover a much larger fraction of job throughput. There is
going to be a lot of cases out there where people run the same job, time
and time again (presumably with different data, though I've seen cases
where that wasn't true, which was stupid).

I hope that we end up with solutions that are both capable of properly
solving these basic cases (I suppose you could call them the interop
use-case set) and yet which do not preclude extension to taking on the
bigger picture. Both are important. OK, taking on the bigger picture may
need further extension profiles and new services, but that's not a big
deal in my view.

Donal.