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Overview
PGL is a high level, domain-specific language that is used to describe
Polygraph workloads. PGL is somewhat similar to many modern programming
languages but is much ``simpler''. On the other hand, PGL is more rich and
complex than a typical configuration language. Our major objective in
designing PGL was to have a language that allows to specify complex workloads
in a ``natural'' way.
To get a general idea of PGL, you may want to browse through configuration
files in the workloads/ directory of the Polygraph distribution and
read documentation pages describing standard
workloads.
Main PGL features are:
- domain specific (knows what Polygraph objects of interest are)
- free format (no dependency on line breaks and character positions)
- fixed number of available functions and procedures (one cannot add new ones)
- fixed number of available object types
- unlimited number of individual objects (variables)
- strict type checking (protects user from hidden type-mismatch errors)
- support for nested files (a file can import information from other files)
- support for basic arithmetic calculations
Many Polygraph programs such as polyclt and polysrv
interpret a configuration file written in PGL, create and configure the
objects described in the file, and start a test or otherwise make use of the
information in the file.
In general, a workload is specified using these steps:
Define objects of interest, such as Polygraph Robots and
Servers. Set specific properties of each object. For example, specify
the IP addresses for Servers to listen on.
Specify relationships between the objects. For example,
instruct Robot R1 to contact origin Servers S1 and
S2.
Decide which objects and settings will actually be used for the
simulation. Others will be simply ignored! Explicit use specification
allows you to build a collection of useful objects and then use an
appropriate subset for a particular experiment. Many commonly used
objects are defined in PGL files located in the
workloads/include/ directory.
If you want to check your configuration file or see how
Polygraph interpreted your code, try the pgl_test
program.
If needed, the steps may be reordered as long as all objects are defined
before they are used.
Finally, here are a few facts that you should keep in mind when writing
configuration files:
PGL is case sensitive.
There are no pointers, references, or ``pass by name''
parameters. A fresh copy of an object is created every time an object
is passed to a function or assigned. Remember this fact when you
modify an object a copy of which were already used elsewhere (your
changes will not be propagated to old copies)!
Polygraph interprets PGL; there is no compilation step.
It is highly desirable and often required to feed the same
configuration file to all Polygraph processes participating in the
test. If you cannot design such a file, you are most likely doing
something wrong.
Current implementation is not foolproof. If you are too
smart or careless, Polygraph may not catch your configuration
errors. Fortunately, in most cases, you will get an assertion
or a fatal error before the actual experiment begins.
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