[R-sig-hpc] New R packages BatchJobs and BatchExperiments for computing on HPCs

[Michel Lang]

The packages BatchJobs and BatchExperiments are now available on CRAN.

We believe some subscribers of this list may find the packages useful.
Here is an excerpt of the abstract of our publication:

The package BatchJobs implements the basic objects and procedures to
control a batch cluster within R. It is structured around cluster
versions of the well-known higher order functions Map, Reduce and
Filter from functional programming. An important feature is that the
state of computation is persistently available in a database. The user
can query the status of jobs and then continue working with a desired
subset.
The second package, BatchExperiments, is tailored for the still very
general scenario of analyzing arbitrary algorithms on problem
instances. It extends BatchJobs by letting the user define an array of
jobs of the kind "apply algorithm A to problem instance P and store
results". It is possible to associate statistical designs with
parameters of algorithms and problems and therefore systematically
study their influence on the results.

We currently support the following batch systems:
* TORQUE/PBS based systems
* LSF
* Sun/Oracle Grid Engine (SGE)
* Makeshift SSH clusters to operate on loosely connected boxes with a
shared common file system
* Local interactive execution, mainly for prototyping
* Local multicore execution

Note that the adoption of other batch systems is in principle easily
achieved, we simply had no access to them. If you want to see support
for your batch system, please send us a mail.

Fore more information, see
* Project site: <http://batchjobs.googlecode.com>
* Technical report on the packages, also submitted to JSS:
<http://sfb876.tu-dortmund.de/PublicPublicationFiles/bischl_etal_2012a.pdf>
* BatchJobs CRAN page:
<http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/BatchJobs/index.html>
* BatchExperiments CRAN page:
<http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/BatchExperiments/index.html>

Regards,
Michel