[saga-rg] 1.4 version of the spec

[Graeme Pound]

Andre,

I have downloaded the latest version of the strawman spec from CVS. 
There have been a lot of changes, which I expect will clarify many issues.

Some immediate _negative_ reaction:

  #1 The package saga.jobmanagement appears to have changed to 
saga.resource. This is a big mistake since 'resource' is a far too vague 
term, anything exposed on the Grid could be considered a resource; 
including computational resources, file systems, hardware etc. This 
package name should be specific to the submission and management of 
computational jobs.

  #2 The introspection added to the saga.Attribute interface further 
confuses the issues surrounding vector and "scalar" attributes. There 
are genuine use cases for vector attributes; for example in the 
JobDefintion class.

However in the strawman the introspection is separated for vector and 
"scalar" attributes, list_attributes() returns a single unified list of 
attribute names, and there is no defined behaviour if a vector attribute 
is requested via get_attribute() or visa versa. This solution is awkward.

An alternative solution is to allow any attribute to be returned via 
get_attribute() and get_vector_attribute(); this is simple since all 
values are strings, a vector returned by get_attribute() be delimited by 
comas or parentheses. Then a single has_attribute() methods would be 
sufficient, and an additional is_vector() method would be useful.

  #4 It is not clear why the task and task_container interfaces 
implement the attribute interface.

  #5 The change from camel case to underscore separated words for 
packages/classes/methods throughout was an unpleasant shock. This 
distracts from genuine changes to the API (particularly if like me you 
use diff to compare the documents).

  #6 A spell checker should be run on the entire document since typos 
remain.


In a separate email you indicate that you would like to submit this 
document as a draft for GGF17 by March 31st. What are the implications 
of this becoming a GGF draft document?

I do not expect to be able to comment full on all changes changes in 
this version by March 31st (including the new monitoring interface), 
what is the revision process for 'draft' documents.


Graeme





Andre Merzky wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> the lates version of the strawman (1.4) is on the wiki.
> 
> Cheers, Andre.
> 
>