Core Minutes 2/3/2004  

Present:    Ursula Berthon, Joanne Bogart,  Toby Burnett,  Jim Chiang,  Johann Cohen-Tanugi, Seth Digel, Richard Dubois, Navid Golpayegani, Traudl Hansl-Kozanecka,  Heather Kelly, Michael Kuss, Matt Langston,  Pat Nolan, James Peachy, Sean Robinson, Leon Rochester, Bob Schaefer, Alex Schlessinger, Tom Stephens, Tracy Usher

• Science Tools data access: (James, Toby) See their presentation for a description of a new approach, partially implemented in the tuple package, to data access. In contrast to current Goodi, which deals in either files or complex data objects, the new approach supports what amounts to a table abstraction, facilitating both row and column access. It provides an STL-like container-with-iterators interface. The new Goodi will only need to provide a relatively thin layer on top of this.

  There were several questions following the presentation.
  Q: What about accessing an extension other than the first in a FITS file or a T-tree other than the first in a ROOT file?  A: Yes, this will be supported.
  Q: What about variable-length columns? A: Yes, they will be supported.
  Q: What about images? A: Hadn't been seriously considered up till now. Might put support for this in a separate package.
  Q: When can we expect to try some of this out?  A: Maybe in about a month.

  Since there is so much interest in exactly what the new facility will and will not do, James and Toby will provide a list of anticipated features.

• MC information deluxe: (Tracy) The standard MC information available in Gleam is not sufficient for in-depth analysis of what's going on in Reconstruction or below, so he is working on an auxiliary package to provide it. See his presentation for details. So far it focusses on Tracker, but there is no reason similar data structures can't be build for CAL and ACD and Tracy expects they will be.

• New Release Manager: (Alex) It's up and running under RH9, using the SLAC batch farm. [NB developers: pay attention to the errors being generated, please.] The new main page includes more up-to-date status information (Toby) Is it now possible to see logs of failed package builds before the full build is complete. (Alex) Not currently. The corresponding web pages are not updated during the build as the status page is, but it could be done.  (Richard) What about running a RH7.2 build as well as RH9, at least as long as Lyon continues to use RH7? (Alex) OK, it can be turned on.

• New externals, GlastRelease v4r0: Binaries for the externals are now in place and in use at SLAC for RH9. Matt has built them for Windows (7.0 and 7.1 versions). They can all be found on the SLAC ftp site. Hence GlastRelease v4r0 is official!  There is a new version of the pil external library floating around, but Richard would like to leave the aforementioned packaged-up full distribution of externals as is for the time being.

• Xerces conversion status: (Joanne) Status and hints for xml-using package owners can be found here. The bulk of the non-disruptive part of the conversion has been done. A few packages still need modifications by their owners. Meanwhile Joanne will start at the bottom (xml and xmlUtil packages) with Xerces 2.4.

• CMT release area: (Traudl)  An experimental build of the InstallArea was done for GlastRelease (Gleam). It contains now the includes, applications (.exe) and part of the libraries. The transition to the use of the InstallArea has become much easier because the includes are correctly installed. It is not yet understood why shared libraries are not installed. In fact neither static (.a) nor shared (.so) libraries are installed, when both are present, which is always the case for our builds. JobOptions and other public files can also be installed, once some rules are followed (see the largely updated write-up for the InstallArea and the steps needed for using it).

• Astroroot for Windows: (Heather)  The Astroroot executable itself apears to be ok. She has run into various problems with other associated executables and is resolving them one by one. Some appear to be ROOT-releated. We may also need to move to a newer pil library.

• Fuzzy clusters port: (Navid) This code was written for Linux and never ported to Windows until now. It appears that Visual Studio 7.0 won't compile it but 7.1 probably will.  Navid needs access to a 7.1 machine to try it on. (Toby) This is available from the UW terminal server.  You get  7.0 if you log onto Glast-ts and 7.1 if you log onto Glast.
• IOC Peer Review: (Richard) It's scheduled for March 2. SSC wants us to install DTS (Data Transfer System) which we will be using to send them fits files. Would like to have it installed by the Review.  Would also like to have Goddard on the list of sites for which SLAC Computing does network monitoring by then.

  Action Items 

• Document effect of MC pruning options (Riccardo) (8/5/2003) It's documented in the code; Tracy will look into putting the information in a more accessible place. (9/2/2003)
• Write up, and perhaps present at a future meeting, hints on debugging. (02/18/03)   Some combination of Toby and Tracy will provide something for Windows.(7/22/03) 
• Overhaul documentation altogether by about November (Heather and ??) (9/2/2003) In progress; not yet done (01/13/04)
• Resolve calibration/timestamp issue. (11/20/02) Online folk have not yet thought about putting timestamp information into EM data, but, thanks to Richard's inquiry, may now do so. (2/25/03) We can probably live without a realistic system for EM, but we will put it on the agenda for the DC1 workshop.(5/6/03) At the DC1 Workshop Steve Ritz  promised to find an authoritative reference for timestamp format and pass it on. (7/17/03) Now that events have "real" timestamps, Joanne needs to reassess situation with Calibration (9/2/2003) Timestamp exists in EM data. Needs to be fetched by Calibration (1/13/04)

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J. Bogart Last Modified: 01-Jun-2010 15:45:18 -0700