Standardization of an API for Distributed Resource Management Systems

Today's cluster and grid environments demand the usage of product-specific APIs and tools for developing distributed applications. We give an overview of the distributed resource management application API (DRMAA) specification, which defines a common interface for job submission, control, and monitoring. The DRMAA specification was developed by the authors at the open grid forum standardization body, and has meanwhile significant adoption in academic and commercial cluster systems. Within this paper, we describe the basic concepts of the finalized API, and explain issues and findings with the standardization of such an unified interface.