Docker universal app web interface

There are various possible interfaces for job submission to BUDA. We could make a Python-based remote API. We (or others) could use this API to integrate it into batch systems.

But for starters, I propose implementing a generic (multi-application) web-based job submission system, using the per-user file sandbox system.

Managing science apps

First, there's a web interface for managing BUDA science apps This shows you the set of existing apps, and lets you edit them or create a new one. The form for this includes

• select (from your file sandbox) a set of 'app files'. Must include
  • a Dockerfile
  • a main prog to run in container
  • other files if needed
  • info per file: logical name, copy flag
• select a plan class (CPU/GPU)
• list of input files (logical name, copy_file)
• list of output files (logical name)
• cmdline (passed to main prog for all jobs)

Submitting jobs

The form for submitting a batch of jobs:

• batch name (optional)
• select a BUDA science app and plan class
• select (from the file sandbox) a zip file of job descriptions. This file has one dir per job:

jobname/
    [cmdline]
    file1 (logical name)
    ...
...

Question: should this system manage file immutability? If so, the above filenames are logical and don't need to be unique; e.g. input files for different jobs can have the same name. The system will create unique physical names.