OMIS -- On-Line Monitoring Interface Specification


Version 2.0


http://wwwbode.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~omis/
email: omis@informatik.tu-muenchen.de

Thomas Ludwig, Roland Wismüller,
Vaidy Sunderam1$\ast$, Arndt Bode


Lehrstuhl für Rechnertechnik und Rechnerorganisation
Institut für Informatik (LRR-TUM)
Technische Universität München
D-80290 München, Germany
tel.: +49-89-289-22042 or -28243 or -28240
fax: +49-89-289-28232
email: {ludwig,wismuell,bode}@informatik.tu-muenchen.de

$\ast$Emory University
Mathematics & Computer Science
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
tel.: +1-404-727-5926, fax: +1-404-727-5611
email: vss@mathcs.emory.edu

July 15, 1997

Abstract

The On-line Monitoring Interface Specification (OMIS) aims at defining an open interface for connecting on-line software development tools to parallel programs running in a distributed environment. Interactive tools like debuggers and performance analyzers and automatic tools like load balancers are typical representatives of the considered class of tools.

The current situation is characterized by the fact that tools either follow the off-line paradigm by only having access to trace data and not to the running program or else they are on-line oriented but suffer from the following deficiencies: they do not support interoperability in the sense that different tools can be used simultaneously -- not even tools from the same developer. Furthermore, no uniform environment exists where the same tools can be used for parallel programs running on different target architectures.

A reason for this situation can be found in a lack of systematic development of monitoring systems, i.e. systems which provide a tool with necessary runtime information about the application programs and make it possible to even manipulate the program run.

The goal of the OMIS project is to specify an interface which is appropriate for a large set of different tools. Having an agreed on on-line monitoring interface facilitates the development of tools in the way that tool implementation and monitoring system implementation are now decoupled. Bringing n tools to m target platforms (consisting of hardware, operating system, programming libraries etc.) will be reduced in complexity from n x m to n + m. In addition, it will eventually be possible to simultaneously use tools of different developers and to compose uniform tool environments.

As a second step following this specification the research group at LRR-TUM has designed an OMIS compliant monitoring system (OCM) which is currently being implemented. It will be available for the PVM and MPI programming models running on networks of workstations. A set of interactive and automatic tools will be made available for OCM.

The present document defines the goals of the OMIS project and lists necessary requirements for such a monitoring system. It is an improved and enhanced version of OMIS 1.0 which was published in February 1996. We will describe the system model OMIS is primarily intended for and give an outline of available services of the interface. A special section will give details on how to extend OMIS, as this is an indispensable feature for future tool development.

We would appreciate to get further feedback on the design of OMIS. If you would like to see special issues incorporated into this specification document you are invited to contact the authors (omis@informatik.tu-muenchen.de). If you would like to participate in the implementation or would like to use OCM for your own tool development please feel free to ask us!