One User's Report on Sandia Data Objects: Evaluation of the DOL and PMO for use in Future

Koegler, Wendy S.

Sandia National Lab., Albuquerque, NM (United States)

关键词: Feedback;    Geometry;    Programming;    Exploration;    Algorithms;   

DOI  :  10.2172/820203
RP-ID  :  2003-8591
RP-ID  :  AC04-94AL85000
RP-ID  :  820203

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The Feature Characterization project (FCDMF) has the goal of building tools that can extract and analyze coherent features in a terabyte dataset. We desire to extend our feature characterization library (FClib) to support a wider variety of complex ASCI data, and to support parallel algorithms. An attractive alternative to extending the library's internal data structures is to replace them with an externally provided data object. This report is the summary of a quick exploration of two candidate data objects in use at Sandia National Laboratories: the Data Object Library (DOL) and the Parallel Mesh Object (PMO). It is our hope that this report will provide information for potential users of the data objects, as well as feedback for the objects' developers. The data objects were evaluated as to whether they (1) supported the same capabilities as the current version of FClib, (2) provided additional required capabilities, and (3) were relatively easy to use. Both data objects met the requirements of having the same capabilities as FClib and support for parallel algorithms. However, the DOL has a richer set of data structures that more closely align with the current data structures of FClib and our planned extensions. Specifically, the DOL can support time changing geometry, which is needed to represent features as datasets. Unfortunately, the DOL did not meet our ease of use requirement. The PMO was easier to learn and use, but did not support time-changing geometry. Given the above results, we will extend the FClib API (Application Programming Interface) to handle time-changing geometry. Then we will replace the internal data structures with the DOL, but we will provide the FClib API in addition to the DOL API to support simplified usage.