I have a little comment on the API. The two step process that we came up with requires the user to first call createExperiment to get an experiment ID and then call launchExperiment(JobRequest jobRequest). The jobRequest object should include the experimentID returned by createExperiment() but we have no way of enforcing this.
I think this will be confusing to a developer and may introduce other problems. How about having createExperiment() return a JobRequest object with default values, including the correct experimentID? The client code can update these as needed to override defaults and then send back to the orchestrator through launchExperiment(). Marlon On 1/17/14 10:32 AM, Saminda Wijeratne wrote: > Following are few thoughts I had during my review of the component, > > *Multi-threaded vs single threaded* > If we are going to have multi-threaded job submission the implementation > should work on handling race conditions. Essentially JobSubmitter should be > able to "lock" an experiment request before continuing processing that > request so that other JobSubmitters accessing the experiment requests a the > same time would skip it. > > *Orchestrator service* > We might want to think of the possibility in future where we will be having > multiple deployments of an Airavata service. This could particularly be > true for SciGaP. We may have to think how some of the internal data > structures/SPIs should be updated to accomodate such requirements in future. > > *Orchestrator Component configurations* > I see alot of places where the orchestrator can have configurations. I > think its too early finalize them, but I think we can start refactoring > them out perhaps to the airavata-server.properties. I'm also seeing the > orchestrator is now hardcoded to use default/admin gateway and username. I > think it should come from the request itself. > > *Visibility of API functions* > I think initialize(), shutdown() and startJobSubmitter() functions should > not be part of the API because I don't see a scenario where the gateway > developer would be responsible for using them. They serve a more internal > purpose of managing the orchestrator component IMO. As Amila pointed out so > long ago (wink) functions that do not concern outside parties should not be > used as part of the API. > > *Return values of Orchestrator API* > IMO unless it is specifically required to do so I think the functions does > not necessarily need to return anything other than throw exceptions when > needed. For example the launchExperiment can simply return void if all is > succesful and return an exception if something fails. Handling issues with > a try catch is not only simpler but also the explanations are readily > available for the user. > > *Data persisted in registry* > ExperimentRequest.getUsername() : I think we should clarify what this > username denotes. In current API, in experiment submission we consider two > types of users. Submission user (the user who submits the experiment to the > Airavata Server - this is inferred by the request itself) and the execution > user (the user who corelates to the application executions of the gateway - > thus this user can be a different user for different gateway, eg: community > user, gateway user). > I think we should persist the date/time of the experiment request as well. > Also when retrying of API functions in the case of a failure in an previous > attempt there should be a way to not to repeat already performed steps or > gracefully roleback and redo those required steps as necessary. While such > actions could be transparent to the user sometimes it might make sense to > allow user to be notified of success/failure of a retry. However this might > mean keeping additional records at the registry level. >
