The On-line Monitoring Interface Specification (OMIS) aims at defining an open interface for connecting on-line software development tools to parallel programs running in a distributed environment. Interactive tools like debuggers and performance analyzers and automatic tools like load balancers are typical representatives of the considered class of tools. The current situation is characterized by the fact that tools either follow the off-line paradigm by only having access to trace data and not to the running program or else they are on-line oriented but suffer from the following deficiencies: they do not support interoperability in the sense that different tools can be used simultaneously --- not even tools from the same developer. Furthermore, no uniform environment exists where the same tools can be used for parallel programs running on different target architectures. A reason for this situation can be found in a lack of systematic development of monitoring systems, i.e. systems which provide a tool with necessary runtime information about the application programs and make it possible to even manipulate the program run. The goal of the OMIS project is to specify an interface which is appropriate for a large set of different tools. Having an agreed on on-line monitoring interface facilitates the development of tools in the way that tool implementation and monitoring system implementation are now decoupled. Bringing $n$ tools to $m$ systems (consisting of hardware, operating system, programming libraries etc.) will be reduced in complexity from $n \times m$ to $n + m$. In addition, it will eventually be possible to simultaneously use tools of different developers and to compose uniform tool environments. In addition to producing the specification, the research group at LRR-TUM will implement an OMIS compliant monitoring system for the PVM programming model running on a network of workstations. Several interactive and automatic tools will be connected to this concrete system. The present document defines the goals of the OMIS project and lists necessary requirements for such a monitoring system. We will describe the system model OMIS is primarily intended for and give an outline of available services of the interface. A special section will give details on how to extend OMIS, as this is an indispensable feature for future tool development.
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