DEVELOPING APPLICATIONS WITH THE TASK MODEL  Execution of task-

based applications involves several components. The development of such

applications is limited to the following operations:  Defining classes
implementing the ITask interface  Creating a properly configured
AnekaApplication instance  Creating ITask instances and wrapping them
into AnekaTask instances  Executing the application and waiting for its
completion
 Aneka task-based programming
• Aneka provides support for all the flavors of
task-based programming
• bag-of-tasks application
• Aneka.Tasks.ITask
• parameter sweep applications and workflows
have been integrated into the framework
Task programming model
DEVELOPING APPLICATIONS WITH THE TASK MODEL

Execution of task-based applications involves several components. The

development of such applications is limited to the following operations:

Defining classes implementing the ITask interface

Creating a properly configured AnekaApplication instance
Creating ITask instances and wrapping them into AnekaTask instances
Executing the application and waiting for its completion
 ITask and
AnekaTask
• Aneka.Tasks namespace (Aneka.Tasks.dll)
• ITask interface
• ITask interface provides a programming
approach for developing native tasks
• .NET framework
• Visual Basic, C#, C++, Python, COBOL, Jscript, Eiffel, Java, Haskell, Pascal, ML, Ada,
APL, C, C++, Perl, SmallTalk, Oberon, Scheme, Mercury, Oz, RPG, Objective Camlto
name some of them

• need to be serializable
• Example: computes the Gaussian distribution
for a given point x
• ITask provides minimum restrictions on how
to implement a task class
• It is required for managing tasks within
Aneka
• Aneka.Entity.WorkUnit
• facilities for specifying input and output files
for the task
 Controlling task
execution
• Task classes and AnekaTask define the
computation logic of a task-based application
• implementing the coordination logic of the
application.
• AnekaApplication<AnekaTask,
TaskManager>
• Static and dynamic task submission
• Application state and task state monitoring
• Event-based notification of task completion or
failure
• Static submission is a very common pattern in
the case of task-based applications, and it
involves the creation of all the tasks that need
to be executed in one loop and their
submission as a single bag
• Dynamic submission of tasks is a more
efficient technique and involves the
submission of tasks as a result of the event-
based notification mechanism implemented in
the AnekaApplication class
• a new task for the computation of an
intermediate value of the distribution is
submitted.
• WorkUnitFailed and WorkUnitFinished
 File management
• files may constitute input data for tasks
• may contain the result of a computation
• may represent executable code or library
dependencies
• support for file transfers
• Aneka provides built-in capabilities for file
management in a distributed infrastructure
• WorkUnit and ApplicationBase classes
• ApplicationBase.SharedFiles
• WorkUnit.InputFiles
• WorkUnit.OutputFiles
• A fundamental component for the
management of files is the FileData class
• Aneka.Data.Entity namespace (Aneka.
Data.dll).
 Task
libraries
• Aneka provides a set of ready-to-use tasks for
performing the most basic operations for
remote file management
• Aneka.Tasks.dll library
• File copy, Legacy application execution,
Substitute operation, File deletion, Timed
delay, Task composition
• File copy. The LocalCopyTask performs the copy of a file on the
remote node; it takes a file as input and produces a copy of it under a
different name or path
• Legacy application execution. The ExecuteTask allows executing
external and legacy applications by using the
System.Diagnostics.Process class.
Substitute operation. The SubstituteTask performs a search-and-replace operation
within a given file by saving the resulting file under a different name.

File deletion. The DeleteTask deletes a file that is accessible through the file system
on the remote node.
Timed delay. The WaitTask introduces a timed delay.

Task composition. The CompositeTask implements the composite pattern and allows
expressing a task as a composition of multiple tasks that are executed in sequence.
This task is very useful to perform complex tasks involving the combination of
operations implemented in other tasks
 Web services integration
• Local file copy on the remote node
• File deletion
• Legacy application execution through the
common shell services
• Parameter substitution
Development and monitoring tools
• The core libraries allow developers to directly
program parameter sweep applications and
embed them into other applications
• Additional tools simplify design and development
of parameter sweep applications by providing
support for visual design of the applications and
interactive and noninteractive application
execution.
• Aneka Design Explorer and the Aneka PSM
Console.
 Managing
workflows
• Support for workflow in Aneka is not native
but is obtained with plug-ins that allow client-
based workflow managers to submit tasks to
Aneka.
• two different workflow managers can leverage
Aneka for task execution: the Workflow
Engine and Offspring