Stephen Burke wrote:
> LHC Computer Grid - Rollout 
>   
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jan Just Keijser
>>     
> said:
>   
>> I don't care when the decision was made : this is the very first time 
>> that the new format is rolled out in production for DPM 
>> systems:
>>     
>
> That just isn't true, the new format has been published for a long time,
> and is the *only* way to publish information about space tokens (or
> indeed any situation with more than one storage area per VO). You
> wouldn't be able to use lcg-utils with space tokens without it! The
> change now is just to stop publishing the old format, which was obsolete
> a long time ago and is already not published by many SEs.
>
>   
>> Where is the new format documented (outside of a WG paper) ?
>>     
>
> https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/pub/LCG/WLCGCommonComputingReadinessChalleng
> es/WLCG_GlueSchemaUsage-1.8.pdf
>
> page 32 and following.
>
>   
>> To me, this shows one of the biggest (social) problems that grid 
>> computing faces: it seems we cannot inform the right people 
>> at the right 
>> time when changes are made to the middleware .
>>     
>
> This was widely disseminated among the people working on storage
> systems, data management software and the glue schema, reported in GDBs,
> etc etc. What more do you suggest?
>
>   
all this is spoken like a true WLCG advocate; I admit that this is an 
LCG mailing list so it is to be expected but
- a lot of non-HEP VOs don't space tokens (none in the Netherlands do)
- non-HEP VOs don't read GDB minutes, and are not often found on CERN 
twiki pages
- non-HEP VOs don't talk directly to middleware developers etc. All they 
want to do is "run their stuff on the grid" and usually they want to do 
it using some Java-based application, or they use a set of scripts which 
tend to rely on tools like 'lcg-infosites' (which you have failed to 
reply to thus far ;-) )
- Who updates the Java application developers of these upcoming changes? 
Who explains what changes and how tools should be adjusted?
- *ALL* SEs in the netherlands publish the old SA attributes

I admit that I am to blame here partially: I was aware of the glue 1.3 
schema but I had not seen it in production on storage systems until 
dCache was upgraded a few months back and on DPM 1.7.3 , which was 
released into production a few months ago. I was expecting that the old 
schema would be around much longer so that our users would have time to 
migrate to the new system (compare results of the old query to the new 
query, that kind of thing).

The point I was trying to make in this thread is that the way these 
changes propagate throughout the grid is typical of the way the grid is 
(not) working for a lot of users in the smaller non-HEP VOs : things 
need to change for a good reason, some tools are upgraded, others are 
not. Tools and servers are kept backwards compatible for a long time, 
which I applaud, but at some point they are switched off (I still have 
to explain to local users here that a regular gridFTP server cannot be 
published in the BDII - small change to the HEP VOs but this can be a 
major issue for a smaller VO!)

My hope is/was that all of this would change in the post-EGEE era but 
thus far things only seem to , let's put it mildly, not improve.


regards,

JJK / Jan Just Keijser
Nikhef
Amsterdam