prepIFS
Links to sections
- WSS system
- prepIFS
- prepOASIS
- SMS
- Security system
Further prepIFS documentation
- PrepIFS User Guide (new frame)
- PrepIFS checking language (new frame)
- PrepIFS presentation (new frame)
PrepIFS is an interactive meteorological application to prepare research experiments using the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) at ECMWF. It was originally written in C and provided an X-windows form based interface to the namelists used by IFS. In 1997 it was rewritten in Java as a general purpose configuration tool.The redesign was to give users more interactive support and to allow for simpler administration of the growing complexity of configuration requirements for the IFS model. Today prepIFS has more than 150 users and many of them being remote users from ECMWF memberstates.
prepIFS and PRISM = prepPRISM
PrepIFS has been used to allow configuration of the climate models the adapted to the SRE and SCE. Tasks have been created for the individual steps in the climate simulation. Integration with the diagnostics package allows for selection of different diagnostics from the tool. A new module for configuration of the OASIS-4 coupler has been integrated and is now under testing. It is available as a standalone tool and is described here.prepIFS, features in short
- Standard input files
XML based configuration files (default files) simple enough to be auto generated or hand edited. Configuration elements are defined as object types which are translated into graphical user interface components and consistently displayed by the graphical user interface.
- Documentation management system
The documentation is integrated into the configuration files and can be displayed from the prepIFS graphical user interface or browsed by a webbrowser through a Cocoon (See Glossary \ref {cha:cha5}) server.
- Experiment meta database
Every experiment submitted has a set of metadata extracted which can conveniently be browsed for reference later.
- Easy configuration administration
Multiple configuration views can be built from the same a set of configuration files by combining multiple server configurations and using standalone application parameters.
- Configuration management
Saved configurations can be recreated completely or migrated to a later or previous release automatically. Together with a diff tool users can move configurations and verify the result.
- Output interface
Output files can be generated for Korn shell scripts or SMS definitions and can be extended to incorporate new formats.
- Automatic dynamic configuration modification
A configuration can be dynamically updated by the server to reflect a change of computing platform, resolution or other for other purposes. Any number of variables can be changed at once to the new state.
- Configuration consistency
Configurations can be checked for internal consistency through the prepIFS checking language. The language describes rules for the configuration and verifies that the user configuration is valid. The language is extensible and can make use of any remote server object visible to the client.
- Configuration optimisation
Rules can be written using the check language to optimise configurations automatically such as switching on/off compile flags or turning off debugging.
- Support for large configurations
IFS experiments involve thousands of variables.
- Support for XML in/XML out configuration files
Any XML file can now be adapted to prepIFS with a few extensions as described in prepifs and OASIS4. This has been used for providing support to the OASIS-4 coupler.
prepIFS software architecture
The prepIFS application uses the WSS previously described here. and consists of 3 software components:- Front-end graphical user interface This is the visible component that the user interacts with to configure his experiment.
- Defaults Server This software component delivers the XML based configuration files to the graphical user interface.
- Configuration Server This software component submits the experiments to a PRISM site and manages the users configurations.
The 3 components can be run as one standalone application or in a client/server version.
Below is a figure of the software components used in the PrepIFS system.
prepIFS configuration
The prepIFS system is designed to guide you through the 3 phases of configuration:- A Definition
- B Composition
- C Deployment
The definition phase comprises the definition of all component models to be coupled (model interfaces - PMIOD), transformation entities, I/O options, post-processing options, diagnostic options, statistic options, ... etc. in metadata files. For OASIS4 the metadata is provided by the PMIOD and for the models the modelnamelists files are used. An example of a the metadata files and the schemas can be found here and a complete description of the PMIOD and the modelnamelist is also available. In the PRISM system the definitions are provided by the PRISM model administrator and presented to the PRISM user through the user interface. The PRISM CD provides a complete working setup example.
During the composition phase the PRISM user sets up a specific coupled experiment through the user interface by
- selecting individual model components to couple,
- configuring the constitution of each individual model component (Specific Model Input and Output Configuration (SMIOC)),
- composing the coupling configuration (Specific Coupling Configuration (SCC)),
- selecting other pre-/post-processing options,
- selecting the site and computing resources to use.
During the deployment phase an abstract compact description of an experiment is generated. This is defined as a configuration instance. A configuration instance details how to run the coupled experiment on a computer in a format, that can be understood by the computer's operating system. Further, it contains information on the coupling communication between models and the internal communication of each model component on the chosen platform. Consistency checking (new frame) before deployment ensures a correct configuration for each task.
Below is a screenshot of prepIFS.
More screenshots are available on the WSS page.
Author, Claes Larsson latest change: Jan 5, 2005
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