The SimDB system defines the following concepts.

Set Descriptor

A Set Descriptor (SD) is a sequence of pairs <key, value> that we call the Set Descriptor fields. The key is always a string, while the value can be a string, an integer or a float. A SD has a special integer field called sequence number, used as unique identifier. A SD can have at most 512 fields.

Data Item

A Data Item (DI) represents an input or output file required by a certain program. A Data Item is defined by a name, a tag (Necessary or Unnecessary) and a group (Input or Output).

Data Set

A Data Set (DS) is defined by:

  1. A Set Descriptor.
  2. A collection of Data Items (at most 512).

Data Set Specifier

A Data Set is an instance of a certain Data Set Specifier (DSS), which is a configuration file where are described:

  1. The names and the types of the SD fields.
  2. The names, the tags and the groups of the DSS Data Items.

The following is an example of a DSS configuration file:

SD

name        string
date        string
pressure    float
age         int
description string

DI

muphy_inp file N input
atom      file N input
bgkflag   file N input
mpiinfo   file N input
CONF      file N output
Cengine_stdout file U output
Cengine_stderr file U output
emol      file N output