[Halld-offline] MInutes, GlueX Offline Software Meeting, Feb. 23 '11

[Mark M. Ito]

Find the minutes at 
http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting%2C_February_23%2C_2011#Minutes 
and as text below.

   ==

GlueX Offline Meeting, February 23, 2011

Minutes

    Present:
      * IU: Jake Bennett, Matt Shepherd, Kei Moriya
      * JLab: Vardan Gyurjyan, Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Dmitry
        Romanov, Elton Smith, Sascha Somov, Simon Taylor, Elliott Wolin,
        Beni Zihlmann


Announcements

     1. Mark reminded us of the lastest tagged release of the
        simulation/reconstruction software: [33]sim-recon-2011-02-02.
     2. Mark called attention to the [34]Computing Model Spreadsheet that
        was circulated on the email list. Modifications continue based on
        feedback from the Collaboration.
     3. Elliott announced that Andrew Blackburn will start work again on
        the ded event display next week. The next goal: have a simple way
        to connect a running JANA process to the event display, with
        two-way communication, for example to try different algorithms
        tracking on a single selected event within an event stream.
           + There was a discussion of how we decide on event display
             technology and whether we had enough manpower to pursue more
             than one avenue and, related to that, why is the current
             viewer (hdview2) not good enough. Andrew has been using the
             bCNU framework developed by Dave Heddle of CNU. Dmitry has
             been planning to look at using the EVE package of ROOT, but
             has not had much time to look at it. hdview2 also uses a
             subset of ROOT. Dave told us that hdview2 was not designed as
             a platform for long-term development. Elliott told us that the
             effort from Andrew and Dave H. is, if not free, of very low
             cost to the Collaboration and the framework will in any case
             be used in Hall B. EVE can be easily tied to the HDDS geometry
             specification (a ROOT version of the HDDS geometry already
             "exists") and would have built-in 3D capabilities as well as
             2D projections. Elton in particular questioned whether we can
             sustain multiple efforts, the EVE route being the most
             speculative at this point. We also discussed the question of
             who would maintain the program. Andrew is an undergraduate and
             Dave H.'s primary commitment is to CLAS12. MEPhI (Dmitry's
             institution) might be able to support a software effort, but
             they are already considering several hardware contributions.
             David thought that we should convene a meeting sooner than the
             next offline meeting to discuss the issues, especially since
             Andrew is slated to start next week. Clearly more discussion
             is needed; we did not come to any decisions.


Review of minutes from the last meeting

      * The [36]new release of JANA, 0.6.3, has arrived. Note that the
        build steps have changed slightly from previous versions.
      * David is doing work to characterize the "split-off problem". He
        intends to feed back what he finds to the folks working on BCAL
        reconstruction, among others.
      * Beni reported that Richard Jones has checked in some changes to
        HDDM to eliminate compiler warnings when building with gcc 4.4.5.
      * There was a meeting last week to discuss the way timing is handled
        in the reconstruction. One take-away that Matt mentioned was the
        given the way times are generated in the Monte Carlo, where t=0 is
        defined as the time where the photon beam crosses the center of the
        target, using the raw times is equivalent to perfect resolution and
        a perfect identification of the beam RF bucket. We can therefore
        just go with the time offset in the raw times as if we are in the
        era of identifying the RF bucket since the RF-bucket timing should
        be very good compared to any measured time in the detector.
      * Kei will present an update on his PID studies at the next Physics
        Working Group meeting.


Configuring JANA

    David described the system to set parameters, mainly for
    reconstruction, in the JANA framework. The principal features are:
      * Ability to change the parameters at run-time as an option on the
        command line
      * Provision for defaults
      * Provision for discovery of parameter settings
      * A system for specifying non-default values of parameters via a
        configuration file
      * A system for generating comprehensive configuration files from a
        given instance of a program.

    See [38]his slides for details. Kei remarked that the talk had a lot of
    valuable information and it should be linked from the wiki in an
    appropriate location.

Calibration Database Update

    Dmitry gave a report on recent progress. He described the format of a
    request string used to access constants from the CCDB. It specifies
    type of constants, run, variation, and modification time. All can be
    specified, but only type is required. If omitted, the other fields have
    default values. He also gave us status summary for the various aspects
    of the problem. See [40]his slides for details. Dmitry returns to
    Moscow this weekend, but will be in touch electronically and plans to
    continue his work on this project.

Action Item Review

    We looked at them. See the links in the [42]agenda above.

    Retrieved from
    
"http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting%2C_February_23%2C_2011"

References

   33. 
https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2011-February/000500.html
   34. 
https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2011-February/000507.html
   36. 
https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2011-February/000501.html
   38. 
http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/images/4/45/20110223_ConfigurationParameters_lawrence.pdf
   40. https://halldweb1.jlab.org/talks/2011-1Q/ccdb_update_2_23_2011.pptx
   42. 
http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting%2C_February_23%2C_2011#Agenda