[saga-rg] persistent session management?

[Andre Merzky]

Hi all, 

during last GGF, an interesting discussion happened in the
DRMA group session.  Discussed was following use case:

  - a application starts
  - it creates a session handle
  - it starts a task (long running) with that session handle
  - it closes the session (destroys the handle
  - it stops

  - the application starts again
  - creates a session handle
  - it retrieves the old task handle
  - it waits for that task to finish, or just queries its
    status
  - it destroys the session handle again

The point here is obviously: the session lifetime actually
exceeds the runtime of the application.  That scenario is
most simple to the application programmer if the session
created during the second run is actually the SAME session
as in the first run.  But that mechanism would obviously
involves some state management, and creates a set of
problems:

 - who can (re)create the session?
 - can it be re cretaed twice?  At the same time?
 - how is the session to be re created identified?
 - where are persistend information stored?  is it
   neccessary to store persistent information?

Now, the question I would like to raise here:

 - do people think that mechanism is useful?
 - are there really situations which cannot be handled by
   creating a new session with the same properties (security
   context, ownership etc) as the initial session?

Cheers, Andre.


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