[saga-rg] Fwd (s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA Strawman API

[Andre Merzky]

Hi Steven, 

thanks for your comments, I forward them to the list - hope
you don't mind.

Cheers, Andre.


----- Forwarded message from Steven Newhouse <s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk> -----

> Date:    Sun, 29 May 2005 14:47:40 +0100
> From:    Steven Newhouse <s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk>
> To:      Shantenu Jha <s.jha at ucl.ac.uk>
> CC:      Tom Goodale <goodale at cct.lsu.edu>, Andre Merzky <andre at merzky.net>
> Subject: Re: SAGA Strawman API
> 
> Hi Shantenu,
> 
> >In order to advance the SAGA strawman API, we need urgently
> >some feedback from outside the authors group.  
> 
> I have been carrying around for over month and have only just (late I'm 
> afraid!) got round to looking at it. A few general comments...
> 
> 1. OO vs. functional
> I can understand specifying in one language - no problem. But you need 
> to show read across to different languages and systems.
> 
> 2. Task
> Didn't understand this at all! Are you proposing to support 5 different 
> systems or expecting one to be selected from these 5?
> 
> 3. Security
> Inconsistent use of security - it appears in the stream section but 
> nowhere else. I think this is very wrong. Not specifying a security 
> system makes sense, but I think all of thes emethods should have a 
> security token being passed into them or it should be an argument in the 
> relevant object constructor.
> 
> 4. URL - P10
> I assume the URL can support a number of protocols - 
> http/https/file/gridftp. I see no way to register plugins in the 
> interface (may be this is an 'internal' interface as opposed to a user 
> funtion. Maybe there needs to be aet of interfaces to help the 
> developers, e.g. register protocol plugins.
> 
> 5. Languages
> These examples (with the OO background) obviously look very Java. I 
> think you need a section (but not for each area) showing how the 
> interfaces get rendered in different areas. This will help adoption & 
> buyin from Perl, Python, F77, C, & other communities. How are the 
> exceptions handled in different programming languages? I'd almost be 
> tempted to return all error codes from the function as the return value.
> 
> 6. Focus
> The large number of APIs makes the document appear un-focuses. You 
> mention a focus on tier 1 interfaces (which is good) but is this the 
> whole document or a subset of the current draft? If its the whole 
> document I think you need to drop more! Have this document as a 
> framework but take forward a smaller document for standardisation. Samll 
> is better!
> 
> 7. Partial Implementations
> How are you going to handle partial functionality implementations? 
> Should _all_ operations support a NotImplementedException ? Should there 
> be a stndard static method in each section to discover what is 
> implemented? e.g. supported protocols & supported methods.
> 
> 8. SAGA File Transfer.
> You have an 'LSF' schema for >>, >, < & <<. But in the file/directory 
> area you use a series of attribute flags. I think you should carry these 
> attribute flags forward into the job definition area - either way I 
> think you should have one model not two!
> 
> General Thoughts
> The document needs to be broken up IMHO - either into sections or 
> individual documents.
> I. General Model. Language mapping. Standard attribute model. Security. 
> Tasks
> II. Tier 1 Interfaces.
> III Tier 2 and above Interfaces.
> 
> This would make it clearer what you are doing now & the constructs & 
> concepts that you are using to build the model.
> 
> Hope that helps! Happy to clarify any of the above...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Steven
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Andre Merzky                      | phon: +31 - 20 - 598 - 7759 |
| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) | fax : +31 - 20 - 598 - 7653 |
| Dept. of Computer Science         | mail: merzky at cs.vu.nl       |
| De Boelelaan 1083a                | www:  http://www.merzky.net |
| 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands    |                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+