Re: [saga-rg] Job states proposal

Hi Chris, thanks for the discussions at GGF, and for this proposal! I am supportive of the proposal. It basically means that we maintain a very simple state model for SAGA, with a very finite number of states - but allow a more detailed state model to be exposed if needed. I am all for it. As for the suspend and hold state: I would, contrary to Chris, move the hold state into the details, and only expose the suspend state. Reason would be that we have suspend/resume methods, but no hold, and no use cases for hold. Well, Chris' argument to that was, IIRC, that we actually should have hold (as a flag to submit), as it is supported by most backends. I guess that is a minor detail, either way will work fine at the end Cheers, Andre. Quoting [Christopher Smith] (Feb 16 2006):

Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 05:05:15 -0800 Subject: [saga-rg] Job states proposal From: Christopher Smith To: Simple API for Grid Applications WG

Ok ... here's my proposal for modelling the SAGA job states.

There is a typical path through the states:

New --> Pending --> Running --> Finished

You could also submit with a hold, or put a Pending job on hold:

New --> Hold <--> Pending

You can suspend a job (and resume it):

Running <--> Suspended

The job can fail in execution:

Running --> Failed

And the job can be cancelled:

Running --> Cancelled New --> Cancelled Pending --> Cancelled Suspended --> Cancelled

All states can go to "Unknown".

Let's not bother modelling User and System suspended and hold states, pending some more experience and let's not bother with all the pre/post states and file staging stuff pending experience and use cases, but see below on extended states.

This model pretty much preserves what we had before (adding unknown, I believe), and it represents the "basic" SAGA state model.

Now ... in order to have the ability to add states (say to support the BES state model), we can define a class for JobState that contains the BaseState (one of the enumerated states from above) and that has an ExtendedState attribute defined as a vector of strings. The job can then represent some of the extended states such as "Running PreExecution" or "Running StagingIn", etc, etc. By using the attribute mechanism, coders can get started with SAGA implementations now, and as we extend the state model according to experience and use cases, we merely need to specify acceptable strings, rather than change the underlying data structures.

My $0.02

-- Chris

-- "So much time, so little to do..." -- Garfield