[HTCondor-users] Programmatic access to match analysis?

[Ian McEwen <mian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi;

This isn't something I'm expecting to have time to do soon, so I'm just
gathering information for now, but I'm wondering if there's an
appropriate way to get programmatic access to what `condor_q -analyze`
and `-better-analyze` output, especially for jobs that have not yet been
submitted.

That is, given a job ad (constructed however is appropriate), is there a
good way to test, non-interactively and without submitting the ad,
whether there is a slot that meets the requirements (or, perhaps, if
there could be one with partitionable slot defragmentation?), whether
concurrency limits are met, etc.?

As many of you probably know, we run a system where the direct
interaction with HTCondor (including building job ads and submitting
them) is handled by us, so users are using our web interface without
needing to know HTCondor itself, but lately we've been adding more
features that allow users to select their requirements more
specifically, which may increase the possibility that jobs will be
unable to match (or wait a long time to do so). I'd like to build
something that can give users an idea of whether their job is likely to
run soon, and why or why not.

Thanks in advance for any help!