perfsonar development work

[Martin Swany <>]

Hi Nina,

> You might remember (or not), earlier versions of PerfsonarUI were  
> ignoring the valueunit string. And everything was working fine,  
> when one service started to report values in bits rather than  
> presumed octets and PerfsonarUI was reporting utilization of 400%.
>
> Even if we consider only counters, the client should have the way  
> of recognizing that "errors/sec" and "Eps" are the same thing, in  
> order to plot them on the same axis, or report an average for the  
> last hour, for example. I believe it is not correct to plot  
> apparently different entities to the same axis or averaging between  
> different entities.
> While for the human reader the semantics of both string is  
> obviously the same, for the client those are just strings, but  
> DIFFERENT strings.
>
> My point is that we need a standardized way of valueunit string  
> interpretation, and the best thing coming to my mind is to have  
> standardized list of units. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Very good points.  When there are percentages to be computed,
or when we need to evaluate equivalency, the units are critical.
I recall that we discussed "Eps", "errors/sec" and the like and
made some decisions.  I don't recall those decisions.  If someone
can remind me/point me in the right direction, I'll include them in
the protocol document draft in preparation.

thanks,,
martin