Help on submitting LDAS user commands
The "LDAS User Command" dialog provides a way to execute any LDAS user command. (See http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/doc/userAPI/html for available user commands.) To use this feature, enter just the bare LDAS user command into the large text widget; guild adds the initial "ldasJob" and the name/password/email information before sending it to the LDAS manager. For instance, to execute a getMetaData command, you would type something like:
getMetaData -returnprotocol http:out.xml -outputformat LIGO_LW -sqlquery {select tabname from syscat.tables}
You may use newlines within the command for readability; these will be converted to spaces before the command is sent to the LDAS manager. You may also add comments (or comment out undesired parts of the user command) using the # character, which causes the rest of the text on the line to be ignored.
You can save the currently displayed user command to a file using the "Save As..." button. By convention, these files have an extension of ".job". (You could also create these files by hand, if you wanted.) You can load a user command from a .job file using the "Open..." button.
guild allows you to submit a job in one of two ways. The first is as a "foreground" job, in which case a window pops up to display status messages (e.g. a message saying that the job has finished and giving the location of the output file(s)). This is generally desirable for short jobs. You can have guild automatically download job output, if desired; the filename(s) will be chosen by guild, and will be displayed in the job status window. If you quit guild before the job is done, the job will keep running, but you will not be notified when it finishes (not even through email), and job output will not be downloaded. However, assuming you kept track of the LDAS job ID, you can come back later and do "Get log entries for LDAS job" from the "Utilities..." menu to find out whether the job finished successfully and/or to get the location of the output. (Be sure to specify the correct LDAS server when getting log entries.)
The second way to submit a job is as a "background" job, in which case status messages are sent to the email address you specify. A window pops up just to tell you whether the job started successfully, and to tell you the LDAS job ID. This is generally desirable for long jobs, since you will be notified when the job finishes even if you quit guild in the meantime.
You can save your settings (foreground vs. background job, auto-download choice, email address, and default directory for job files) from one guild session to the next by choosing "Save Settings" under the "File" menu in the main guild window.
The "Prev" and "Next" buttons allow you to see the history of jobs you have submitted, and to modify and/or resubmit them if desired. If the job was read from a file, that filename will be shown as well.