The Grid[Way] Job Template Manager, a tool for parameter sweeping

Parameter sweeping is a widely used algorithmic technique in computational science. It is specially suited for high-throughput computing since the jobs evaluating the parameter space are loosely coupled or independent.A tool that integrates the modeling of a parameter study with the control of jobs in a distributed architecture is presented. The main task is to facilitate the creation and deletion of job templates, which are the elements describing the jobs to be run. Extra functionality relies upon the GridWay Metascheduler, acting as the middleware layer for job submission and control. It supports interesting features like multi-dimensional sweeping space, wildcarding of parameters, functional evaluation of ranges, value-skipping and job template automatic indexation.The use of this tool increases the reliability of the parameter sweep study thanks to the systematic bookkeeping of job templates and respective job statuses. Furthermore, it simplifies the porting of the target application to the grid reducing the required amount of time and effort.Program summaryProgram title: Grid[Way] Job Template Manager (version 1.0)Catalogue identifier: AEIE_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEIE_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Apache license 2.0No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 3545No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 126 879Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: Perl 5.8.5 and aboveComputer: Any (tested on PC x86 and x86_64)Operating system: Unix, GNU/Linux (tested on Ubuntu 9.04, Scientific Linux 4.7, centOS 5.4), Mac OS X (tested on Snow Leopard 10.6)RAM: 10 MBClassification: 6.5External routines: The GridWay Metascheduler [1].Nature of problem: To parameterize and manage an application running on a grid or cluster.Solution method: Generation of job templates as a cross product of the input parameter sets. Also management of the job template files including the job submission to the grid, control and information retrieval.Restrictions: The parameter sweep is limited by disk space during generation of the job templates. The wild-carding of parameters cannot be done in decreasing order. Job submission, control and information is delegated to the GridWay Metascheduler.Running time: From half a second in the simplest operation to a few minutes for thousands of exponential sampling parameters.Reference:[1]GridWay Installation Guide, http://www.gridway.org/doku.php?id=documentation:release_5.6:ig.