Minutes of the 4th CGS-WG telephone conference

The 4th CGS-WG telecon was held on November 5, 2002 (8AM Pacific time). Attendees were:

Larry Flon (USC/ISI)
Viktor Mihajlovski (IBM Germany)
Tom Roney (NCSA)
Ellen Stokes (IBM)
Peter Gietz (DAASI)

• JSIM Document Progress Report
  Ellen reported working on an updated draft.  Currently reviewing the data requirements of PBS, Tivoli Workload Scheduler, and Load Leveler.  The new draft will incorporate those items that match the needs of these current generation job schedulers.  This new draft will be circulated to the email list well in advance of the next telecon.
   
• XML/LDIF Mapping Issue
  Initial discussion re: polling the email list about whether to do these mappings and when.  However subsequent discussion led to the conclusion that it is better to delay such a poll.  Our primary task is to create the MOF describing the JSIM that will be submitted to the DMTF.  There are no current tools that will auto-generate clean XML or LDIF from MOF.  All existing tools require user post-processing to produce something that truly fits the target schema language.  Since this is not something we want to do more than once, it was deemed best to concentrate on the JSIM model and the MOF.  We can worry about what other forms we should deliver the schema in once we are closer to that goal.
   
• What to do about Grid Jobs
  Based upon a discussion that took place in the SCHED-WG mail list (see Grid Job), Tom suggested that our WG consider how our work relates to the concept of a client wishing to schedule a complex Grid Job that involves coordinating activities on multiple nodes of a grid. A discussion followed, and it was decided that we do not want to hold up our work on delivering a practical CIM solution for today's job schedulers.  However, we want to be aware of the Grid Job work.  For the moment, we will include in the text of the JSIM document a Scope of Work section, that indicates our focus on existing job schedulers such as PBS.  We will also add a Use Cases section to the document, and one of those should be the idea of a Grid Job Scheduler using the JSIM model and local job schedulers for the individual components of the overall job.
   
• How our work relates to Grid Services (OGSA)
  We did not have much time to finish discussing this topic before the call ended.  However it is unclear what role our group has in specifying service definitions.  CIM itself, through work that IBM is doing, will be rendered as a Grid Service, allowing basic Get/Set Service Data operations.  We don't see yet that there is any specific Grid Service that this group should model in relation to JSIM.  But the discussion on this topic is not yet finished.

The next Telecon of the CGS-WG is scheduled for 8AM Pacific on Tuesday December 3, 2002.  Dial-in information will be forthcoming.