How do I re-use equivalent jobs in Galaxy (aka Job Cache)?
Armin Dadras
Teresa MüllerWe can reuse the reproducibility of Galaxy to detect if a tool has been run with the exact same parameters and inputs before. In this case, we can simply skip the computational step and just reuse the
data we have previously computed. We call this feature the job cache. Part of the job cache is all your personal data and all data in public histories.
This can be highly helpful, e.g., for training events, if the instructor makes a respective training history public before the event.
If the trainee activates this option in their account and uses the same input and parameters, they will immediately receive the results. This feature reduces the waiting time in the training sessions,
saves energy and computational resources, and therefore reduces environmental impact.
To activate this feature, take the following steps:
- To activate this option for your account, click on your username at the top right of the page.
- Select
Preferencesand navigate to your user-references. - In your middle panel search for
Manage Informationand select them. You can also navigate to “https:///user" — for example, https://usegalaxy.eu/user. - Find the grey box:
Do you want to be able to re-use equivalent jobs? - Within the box, change the slider from
notoyes. - Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the
Savebutton.
- Select
- For every tool you want to run now, you will notice the option
Attempt to re-use jobs with identical parameters?. To test this:- Click on any tool you would like to run
- If you scroll down to the end of the
Tool Parameterssection until you see theRun toolbutton, you will notice the new optionAttempt to re-use jobs with identical parameters?above theRun toolbutton. - You can enable this option by sliding the
NotoYes - Once you click on the
Run tool, Galaxy will check if this tool was run before with the exact same parameters and inputs. If so, the results will be retrieved from thejob cacheand not be calculated.
⚠️ At the moment, this feature only works with data shared/reused inside Galaxy. If you upload the same file twice, we can not detect that it is the same file.