UWS 1.1 job list, sorting NULL values

[Paul Harrison]

> On 2015-10 -19, at 12:58, Grégory Mantelet <gmantele at ari.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi Kristin, Paul,
> 
>    Thank you ; these filters are now clearer for me: they both work only with startTime, and ignore the jobs whose startTime = NULL. I am starting implementing them in my library this week.
> 
>    I agree also to the moment when startTime should be set: only when going into the EXECUTING phase. Actually, after some checks, it appears that I had already implemented this behavior correctly in my UWS-Library...so I do not have anything to change.
> 
>    Now, just a little note about endTime: when going from PENDING to ABORTED, I have indeed no startTime, but I have an endTime set at the date-time when the abortion has been done. I do not know whether it makes sense for you. My idea for that was that the job has never been started, but is anyway in a "finished" state, then represented by a not-NULL endTime.

I think that it is probably sensible to do as you are already doing - I think that the end time should be set when the job enters one of the “terminal” states whether that is finishing naturally or being ABORTed
> 
>    Otherwise, the only case when a job can be set into the ERROR phase without a startTime, is when an internal error of the UWS mechanism happens. Thus, errors like validation/preliminary checks (e.g. ADQL query validation) are part of a job and are then reported as error in a job description where startTime is NOT NULL. Since UWS is a generic protocol, I think that such validation or pre-checks should not be done externally to a job execution, except if is specified explicitely in the protocol. Is it right?

I think that this is also the correct approach - in the specification document, UWS does not really know anything about the job description language and as such operations like ADQL validation would most naturally not occur until the job has started execution.


Regards,
	Paul.