Accounting Data to Web Interface Using PERL
This document will explain the process to create a web interface for the accounting information generated by the High Performance Storage Systems (HPSS) accounting report feature. The accounting report contains useful data but it is not easily accessed in a meaningful way. The accounting report is the only way to see summarized storage usage information. The first step is to take the accounting data, make it meaningful and store the modified data in persistent databases. The second step is to generate the various user interfaces, HTML pages, that will be used to access the data. The third step is to transfer all required files to the web server. The web pages pass parameters to Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts that generate dynamic web pages and graphs. The end result is a web page with specific information presented in text with or without graphs. The accounting report has a specific format that allows the use of regular expressions to verify if a line is storage data. Each storage data line is stored in a detailed database file with a name that includes the run date. The detailed database is used to create a summarized database file that also uses run date in its name. The summarized database is used to create the group.html web page that includes a list of all storage users. Scripts that query the database folder to build a list of available databases generate two additional web pages. A master script that is run monthly as part of a cron job, after the accounting report has completed, manages all of these individual scripts. All scripts are written in the PERL programming language. Whenever possible data manipulation scripts are written as filters. All scripts are written to be single source, which means they will function properly on both the open and closed networks at LLNL. The master script handles the command line inputs for all scripts, file transfers to the web server and records run information in a log file. The rest of the scripts manipulate the accounting data or use the files created to generate HTML pages. Each script will be described in detail herein. The following is a brief description of HPSS taken directly from an HPSS web site. ''HPSS is a major development project, which began in 1993 as a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between government and industry. The primary objective of HPSS is to move very large data objects between high performance computers, workstation clusters, and storage libraries at speeds many times faster than is possible with today's software systems. For example, HPSS can manage parallel data transfers from multiple network-connected disk arrays at rates greater than 1 Gbyte per second, making it possible to access high definition digitized video in real time.'' The HPSS accounting report is a canned report whose format is controlled by the HPSS developers.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15006203
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-ID-145202; TRN: US200405%%339
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 13 Aug 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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