Glossary

Programs

• Data-driven web pages: Public web pages that require database access to be generated. Pages like the forums, or ones that contain statistics or client version information, etc. are occasionally turned off (by hand) when the database is down.
• Make_work: Generates new work units.
• Scheduler: Determines what work is going to be sent to/received from requesting clients. If this is off, you cannot send any results or receive any workunits.
• Feeder: Fills up the scheduler work queue with workunits ready to be sent. The scheduler is too busy handling transaction with clients so the feeder does this job.
• File_deleter: Deletes input/output files when no longer needed. This program keeps our upload/download disks as clean as possible.
• Transitioner: Handles state transitions of workunits and results. Basically, the transitioners keep track of the many, many results in progress and makes sure they properly move down the pipeline. It is always asking the questions: Is this workunit ready to send out? Has this result been received yet? Is this a valid result? Can we delete it now?
• Validator: Validates RALPH@home results by comparing them with similar results returned by other users. If enough results for the same workunit have been returned, the validator compares the data and issues credit to all responsible users accordingly.
• Assimilator: Takes scientific data from validated results and puts them in the RALPH@home master database for later analysis.