[saga-rg] SC-05 meeting notes
Andre Merzky
andre at merzky.net
Tue Nov 22 15:20:45 CST 2005
Hi all,
as you know, we had a F2F meeting at SC05. Well, it turned
out to be a rather small group, but we had a nice chat ;-)
Here are the meeting notes:
Participants:
Thilo Kielmann
Shantenu Jha
Yusuke Tanimura
Andre Merzky
- Charter:
We has a discussion with our ADs earlier that day (and
the day before. And the days before that... ;-). It
seems they are to support our WG charter proposal, but
asked us to add:
- exit strategy
- a milestone to revise the API spec process and the
document structure.
We did that, the new charter draft (with only these
changes) is attached. Please comment this week,
otherwise the charter will be submitted to the GFSG as
is.
- Task model:
We agreed that, in order to shorten the discussion, and
to keep the OO spec free from language issues, the task
model will be described in verbose text in the spec, and
the explicit incarnation will be left to the language
bindings.
We further agreed, that for C++ we are going to
implement one or more of the models discussed lately,
and to get feedback based on the implementation, and to
revise the language binding in respect to that feedback.
Otherwise we see the group discussing for quite some
time still, while the implementation is stuck at that
point...
- Issue list:
we went through the API issue list. I don't have
detailed notes on that, but a check of the CVS logs
tells you what we did... As a reminder, the CVS details
are on the wiki.
- We had backroom talks with the Ninf and GridSolve people
at SC, about GridRPC. The direction is still the same:
work on including the GridRPC API into the SAGA
look&feel. However, the GridRPC API might get revised
in that process...
- we talked to Keith Jackson, and he agreed on reviewing
the python language bindings for the API as soon as we
get to that stage (after the C++ reference I guess)
- we had an interesting meeting about a message based
communication API. That is currently not related to
SAGA, but could be interesting in the future. Notes
about that meeting will follow to this list, in about a
week.
Comments/questions/corrections are as always welcome!
Cheers, Andre.
--
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| 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 |
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-------------- next part --------------
The Charter
Informational Section
---------------------
Area: Applications [Standards]
Name of group: Simple API for Grid Applications
Acronym: SAGA-WG
Type of group: Working Group (WG)
Chairs: Tom Goodale goodale at cct.lsu.edu
Shantenu Jha s.jha at ucl.ac.uk
Andre Merzky andre at merzky.net
Secretaries: TBD
Email list: saga-wg at ggf.org
Web page: http://forge.ggf.org/projects/saga-wg/
Charter:
-------
Focus/Purpose:
-------------
Many application developers wish to make use of the exciting
possibilities opened up by the advent of the Grid. Application
developers, however, have their own agendas to pursue and often
cannot spare the time or resources to fully investigate the vast
wealth of Grid technologies and APIs which currently exist. They
would rather be presented with a simple API close to the
programming paradigms and interfaces they are used to.
For example, the process of copying of a remote file may involve
interaction with a replica location service, a data transport
service, a resource management service, and a security service.
It may involve communication via LDAP/LDIF, GRAM, HTTP, and GSI,
as protocols or protocol extensions. A Fortran application
programmer, however, wants to see a call very much like:
call fileCopy (source, destination)
Although this example is simplified, it illustrates the motivation
for our work. The APIs specified by this WG will deliver a similar
level of abstraction for a range of basic operations which need to
be grid aware. The precise set of operations is to be decided by
the WG based upon application requirements and use cases; examples
of such operations may be file access, job submission, monitoring
or steering.
The group will lower the barrier for application
developers to make use of the grid by providing a small,
consistent API for the operations of interest, the Simple API for
Grid Applications (SAGA).
Scope:
-----
The proposed API specifically targets applications, which aim to
take advantage of some of the features that the Grid offers. The
scope of the API is open to all application areas -- scientific
and non-scientific. The scope is primarily defined by the Use
Cases received; but will also reflect the areas of expertise of
active members of the group. Simplicity and conciseness will be
the governing principles. Currently the use cases received are
from scientific application areas and are collected in the
"SAGA Use Case document" (http:// i will add later).
The API targets developers of applications who wish to grid enable
their applications whilst spending as little time as possible
learning new paradigms. Such developers typically wish to devote
their time to their own goals and minimise the time spent coding
infrastructure functionality. The API will insulate application
developers from middleware.
The specification of services and the protocols to interact with
them is out of the scope of the WG. Rather, the API seeks to hide
the detail of any service infrastructures that may or may not
exist to implement the functionality that the application
developer needs. The WG will, however, actively liase with all
grid-middleware groups within the GGF to ensure compatability.
The WG will continue to identify projects outside GGF with similar
API-focus and goals, and will seek their input in the development
of the API and its implementation. The WG will provide detailed
examples and cook-book.
Exit Strategy:
--------------
The group will revisit its charter and scope after the completion
of the SAGA API Spec version 1.0. It will either finish its work,
or continue its work with a revised charter, or spawn off new
groups with related focus to continue the work on the API version 2.
Goals:
------
The SAGA-WG is the logical evolution of the SAGA-RG, which
produced the informational document ("SAGA Use-Case Document") and
did preliminary work on the "SAGA Requirements Document". The
main goal of the WG is the creation of an API specification as a
GGF standard recommendation. On the road to that specification,
SAGA-WG will build upon the SAGA-RG documents and produce the
following:
* Informational Document:
"Requirements document"
- define exact scope of API
- define target user groups for API
- define programming languages to be supported
- define organisation of API documents (e.g. one per subsystem
or language, or one complete document)
* Informational Document:
"SAGA compatability with GGF middleware"
This document will survey the compatability of SAGA
reference implementations with underlying models of
grid-middleware including, but not confined to OGSA.
* Recommendation Document:
"SAGA-API Specification"
The SAGA API specification.
Milestones:
-----------
GGF16: - Presentation of "Requirements document"
- Submit Informational Document "SAGA Compatability with GGF middleware"
- SAGA API Specification pre-v1.0
GGF17: - Submission of SAGA API Specification v1.0
- Implementation details review.
GGF18: - Work commences on extending the functional scope of SAGA (v2.0)
- in relation, revisit WG charter
GGF19: - Present Draft Language Bindings (C++/Java/)
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