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<title>Workunits</title>
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<body bgcolor=ffffff>
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<h2>Workunits</h2>
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<p>
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A <b>workunit</b> describes a computation to be performed.
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Workunits are maintained in the <b>workunit</b> table in the BOINC DB.
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The attributes of a workunit include:
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li> Its name (unique across all workunits in the project).
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<li> Its application.
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<li> An XML document describing its input files and other parameters
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(see below).
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<li> The estimated resource requirements of the work unit
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(computation, memory, disk space).
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<li> A <b>delay bound</b>: upper bound on how long
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an instance of this work unit should take to complete.
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This limits what hosts the workunit is sent to,
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and it's used to assign result deadlines and
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times for retrying results.
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</ul>
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<p>
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The inputs to a workunit are described by an XML document of the form
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<pre>
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[ <file_info>...</file_info> ]
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[ ... ]
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<workunit>
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<app_name>blah</app_name>
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[ <command_line>-flags xyz</command_line> ]
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[ <env_vars>name=val&name=val</env_vars> ]
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[ <file_ref>...</file_ref> ]
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[ ... ]
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<workunit>
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</pre>
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The components are:
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<ul>
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<li> The <b><command_line></b> element, if present, is the
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command-line arguments to be passed to the main program.
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<li> The <b><env_vars></b> element, if present, is a list of
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environment variables to be passed to the main program.
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<li> Each <b><file_ref></b> element describes a <a
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href="files.html">reference</a> to an input file, each of which is
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described by a <b><file_info></b> element.
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</ul>
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<p>
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A workunit is associated with an application, not with a particular
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version or range of versions.
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If the format of your input data changes in
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a way that is incompatible with older versions,
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you must create a new application.
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This can often be avoided by using XML data format.
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<p>
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2002-08-21 23:49:33 +00:00
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The <a href="tools_work.html">create_work</a> utility program provides a
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simplified interface for creating workunits.
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