The nice thing about the BES (and SAGA) state model is that it is rather simple, and probably represents a common denominator for many systems. At the same time, it can easily cover backend specific substates (e.g. the DRMAA distinction for two different SUSPENDED states would be modeled as substates to one SUSPENDED state). These substates are, however, (mostly) for informational purposes. Anyway, I'd like to encourage you to check the BES/SAGA state model in detail. Its probably better described in the BES doc, but possibly easier to understand in the SAGA spec ;-) It would be nice if we could agree on one common job state model at some point in the future... Cheers, Andre. Quoting [Peter Troeger] (May 04 2007):
From: Peter Troeger <peter.troeger@hpi.uni-potsdam.de> To: DRMAA Working Group <drmaa-wg@ogf.org> Subject: Re: [DRMAA-WG] Torque/PBS DRMAA - drmaa_wi* POSIX equivalents II
Issue:
Removing drmaa_wif* routines and introducing one-call semantics could lead to more clear, consistent and informative job life cycle graph. For example, additionally to the existing job states returned by drmaa_job_ps(), we could imagine also states such as DRMAA_JOB_PS_COREDUMPED or DRMAA_JOB_PS_SIGNALLED. ---------
If the drama_w* functions are present, this is not necessary.
If one day the drama_wif* routines are gone, we might need extensions mechanism (like some other groups, JSDL or SAGA?) for the job states to avoid explosions of states and implementation complexity. This is clearly future versions staff.
OGSA-BES had some long discussion about job states, we should look on this. JSDL is no option here, since their job is over after the job submission.
I vote for an updated field study, where we compare the available job state information in the most prominent DRM systems. The key is to find the least common denominator - therefore this would be the chance to remove the different SUSPENDED states ;-)
Peter. -- "XML is like violence: if it does not help, use more."