Dakota Reference Manual: failure_capture

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failure_capture

Determine how Dakota responds to analysis driver failure

## Specification

Alias: none

Argument(s): none

Default: abort

Child Keywords:

| Required/Optional | Description of Group | Dakota Keyword | Dakota Keyword Description
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
| Required (Choose One) | Failure Mitigation (Group 1) | abort | (Default) Abort the Dakota job
retry | Rerun failed analyses
recover | Substitute dummy values for the responses
continuation | Cause Dakota to step toward the failed "target" simulation from a nearby successful "source"

## Description

Dakota can deal with analysis failure in a few ways.

The first step is that Dakota must detect analysis failure. Importantly, Dakota always expects a results file to be written by the analysis driver, even when a failure has occurred. If the file does not exist when the analysis driver exits, a Dakota error results, causing Dakota itself to terminate. The analysis driver communicates an analysis failure to Dakota by writing a results file beginning with the (case-insensitive) word "fail". Any file contents after "fail" are ignored.

Once Dakota detects analysis failure, the failure can be mitigated in four ways:

- abort (the default)
- retry
- recover
- continuation

Refer to the Simulation Code Failure Capturing chapter of the Users Manual[4] for additional information.