Glossary¶
- Agenda
- An agenda specifies what is to be done during a Workload Automation run. This includes which workloads will be run, with what configuration and which augmentations will be enabled, etc. (For more information please see the Agenda Reference.)
- Alias
An alias associated with a workload or a parameter. In case of parameters, this is simply an alternative name for a parameter; Usually these are employed to provide backward compatibility for renamed parameters, or in cases where a there are several commonly used terms, each equally valid, for something.
In case of Workloads, aliases can also be merely alternatives to the workload name, however they can also alter the default values for the parameters the Workload is instantiated with. A common scenario is when a single workload can be run under several distinct configurations (e.g. has several alternative tests that might be run) that are configurable via a parameter. An alias may be added for each such configuration. In order to see the available aliases for a workload, one can use show command.
See also
- Artifact
- An artifact is something that was been generated as part of the run for example a file containing output or meta data in the form of log files. WA supports multiple “kinds” of artifacts and will handle them accordingly, for more information please see the Developer Reference.
- Augmentation
- Augmentations are plugins that augment the execution of workload jobs with additional functionality; usually, that takes the form of generating additional metrics and/or artifacts, such as traces or logs. For more information please see augmentations.
- Classifier
An arbitrary key-value pair that may associated with a job, a metric, or an artifact. The key must be a string. The value can be any simple scalar type (string, integer, boolean, etc). These have no pre-defined meaning but may be used to aid filtering/grouping of metrics and artifacts during output processing.
See also
- Global Alias
Typically, values for plugin parameters are specified name spaced under the plugin’s name in the configuration. A global alias is an alias that may be specified at the top level in configuration.
There two common reasons for this. First, several plugins might specify the same global alias for the same parameter, thus allowing all of them to be configured with one settings. Second, a plugin may not be exposed directly to the user (e.g. resource getters) so it makes more sense to treat its parameters as global configuration values.
See also
- Instrument
- A WA “Instrument” can be quite diverse in its functionality, but the majority of those available in are there to collect some kind of additional data (such as trace, energy readings etc.) from the device during workload execution. To see available instruments please use the list command or see the Plugin Reference.
- Job
- An single execution of a workload. A job is defined by an associated spec. However, multiple jobs can share the same spec; E.g. Even if you only have 1 workload to run but wanted 5 iterations then 5 individual jobs will be generated to be run.
- Metric
- A single numeric measurement or score collected during job execution.
- Output Processor
- An “Output Processor” is what is used to process the output generated by a workload. They can simply store the results in a presentable format or use the information collected to generate additional metrics. To see available output processors please use the list command or see the Plugin Reference.
- Run
- A single execution of wa run command. A run consists of one or more jobs, and results in a single output directory structure containing job results and metadata.
- Section
- A set of configurations for how jobs should be run. The settings in them take less precedence than workload-specific settings. For every section, all jobs will be run again, with the changes specified in the section’s agenda entry. Sections are useful for several runs in which global settings change.
- Spec
- A specification of a workload. For example you can have a single workload specification that is then executed multiple times if you desire multiple iterations but the configuration for the workload will remain the same. In WA2 the term “iteration” used to refer to the same underlying idea as spec now does. It should be noted however, that this is no longer the case and an iteration is merely a configuration point in WA3. Spec is to blueprint as job is to product.
- WA
- Workload Automation. The full name of this framework.
- Workload
- A workload is the lowest level specification for tasks that need to be run on a target. A workload can have multiple iterations, and be run additional multiples of times dependent on the number of sections.