Baseline step

A baseline step performs an experiment (a baseline experiment) and marks it as the initial experiment of a study. The purpose of the step is to build a reference configuration that Akamas can use to measure the effectiveness of an optimization conducted towards a system.

A baseline step offers three options when it comes to selecting the configuration of the baseline experiment:

• Use a configuration made with the default values of the parameters taken from the system of the study

• Use a configuration taken from an experiment of another study

• Use a custom configuration

The baseline step has the following structure:

Field	Type	Value restriction	Is required	Default value	Description
type	string	baseline	yes		The type of the step, in this case, baseline
name	string		yes		The name of the step
runOnFailure	boolean	true false	no	false	The execution policy of the step: false prevents the step from running in case the previous step failed true allows the step to run even if the previous step failed
from	array of objects	Each object should have the structure described below	no		The study and the experiment from which to take the configuration of the baseline experiment The from and experiments fields are defined as an array, but it can only contain one element This can be set only if values is not set
values	object	The keys should match existing parameters	no		The configuration with which execute the baseline experiment This can be set only if from is not set
doNotRenderParameters	string	this cannot be used when using a from option since no experiment is actually executed	no		Parameters not to be rendered. - see Parameter rending
renderParameters	string	this cannot be used when using a from option since no experiment is actually executed	no		Parameters to be rendered. - see Parameter rending

where the from field should have the following structure:

study: "study_from_which_to_take_the_baseline"
experiments: [1]

with

• study contains the name or ID of the study from which to take the configuration

• experiments contains the number of the experiment from which to take the configuration

Examples

Baseline configuration with default values

Default values for the baseline configuration only require setting the name and type fields:

name: "my_baseline"    # name of the step
type: "baseline"       # type of the step (baseline)

Baseline configuration from another study

The configuration taken from another study to be used as a baseline only requires setting the from field:

name: "my_baseline"   # name of the step
type: "baseline"      # type of the step (baseline)
from:
  - study: "study_from_which_take_the_baseline" # name or id of the study from which to take the configuration
    experiments: [1]  # the number of the experiment from which to take the configuration

Notice: the from and experiments fields are defined as an array, but can only contain one element.

Custom baseline configuration

The custom configuration for the baseline only requires setting the values field:

name: "my_baseline"         # name of the step
type: "baseline"            # type of the step (baseline)
values:
  jvm1.maxHeapSize: 1024    # parameter maxHeapSize of jvm1 is set to 1024
  jvm2.maxHeapSize: 2048    # parameter maxHeapSize of jvm2 is set to 2048