Ganga user interface for job definition and management

Ganga is a frontend for job definition and management in a distributed environment. It is being developed in the context of two high-energy physics experiments, ATLAS and LHCb, but is a component-based system that can readily be extended to meet the needs of other user communities. Ganga allows the user to specify the software to run, which may include user code, to set values for any configurable parameters, to select data for processing, and to submit jobs to a variety of local batch queues and Grid-based systems, hiding Grid technicalities. After jobs are submitted, ganga monitors their status, and takes care of saving any output. Ganga offers a Command-Line Interface in Python (CLIP), possibilities for scripting, and a Graphical User Interface (GUI), which significantly simplifies basic tasks. This paper describes the job model and architecture of ganga, and illustrates ganga’s main features as a user interface.