Glossary

Understand the vocabulary of roar and GLaaS to see how your data and code are tracked in the system.

Main Entities

Session (DAG)

A Session is a single run or execution context—essentially a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of work. It captures a specific "branch" of history where jobs were run and artifacts were produced. When you view a DAG on GLaaS, you are looking at a Session.

Job

A Job is a single recorded command execution. It is the active node in the DAG. Every time you run roar run, a new Job is created. Jobs are connected by the artifacts they consume and produce.

Artifact

An Artifact is a file or dataset identified by its content hash. Artifacts are the passive nodes in the DAG, acting as the bridge between Jobs.

Operations & Characteristics

The relationships between Jobs and Artifacts are defined by how data flows through the system.

Get (Input)

A Get is an operation where a Job reads an Artifact.

• Characteristic: input
• What it tracks: The file path where the job expected the data and exactly which version (hash) was provided.

Put (Output)

A Put is an operation where a Job writes an Artifact.

• Characteristic: output
• What it tracks: The location where the file was saved and the resulting hash after the job finished.

Dataset

A Dataset is a special type of Artifact that acts as a container for other items. This is often used for directories or multi-file datasets.

• What it tracks: Metadata about the collection as a whole.

Component

A Component is an individual item within a Dataset artifact.

• Characteristic: component
• What it tracks: The relative path of the file within the collection and its specific hash/size.

Relationship Overview

The following diagram shows how these entities connect to form the lineage of your work.

Interacting with the DAG

You can inspect all these entities directly from your terminal using roar:

• View the current DAG: roar dag
• Inspect a specific job: roar show <job-id>
• Inspect an artifact or path: roar show <hash-or-path>

Tip: You can explore these relationships interactively on GLaaS by clicking on any Job or Artifact to see its upstream "Gets" and downstream "Puts."