[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, October 17, 2012

[Mark M. Ito]

Folks,

Find the minutes below and at 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_October_17,_2012#Minutes 
.

   -- Mark
___

GlueX Offline Meeting, October 17, 2012
Minutes

    Present:
      * CMU: Will Levine, Paul Mattione, Curtis Meyer
      * FSU: Nathan Sparks
      * JLab: Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Yi Qiang, Dmitry Romanov,
        Simon Taylor, Elliott Wolin, Beni Zihlmann
      * UConn: Richard Jones

Review of minutes from the last Offline and Data Challenge meetings

Data Challenge and Software Release

    We decided to proceed with the data challenge without waiting for the
    full implementation of the SEST format. If the format does become
    available during the Challenge, we will discuss switching it in. Since
    the principal goal of the Challenge is to produce output in REST
    format, and only a small fraction of the HDGeant output will be saved,
    this switching it in is a realistic option.

    We will also use the latest version of the BCAL code that does not use
    the new digitization scheme by default. That avoids the need to re-tune
    the BCAL reconstruction for the newer scheme.

    The version used will also use the latest changes to the REST format
    recently checked in by Paul.

New CentOS 6 Nodes at JLab

    David has run some jobs on the new nodes. These provide a 50% increase
    in the power of the JLab farm and are as yet only very lightly used. He
    ran HDGeant-mcsmear-DANA jobs, but without full reconstruction turned
    on in DANA. Some job configuration lessons have been learned already.
    Mark will start a mini-challenge using the new nodes soon.

Profiling the Code

    We raised the issue of profiling our code again. We discussed using
    oprofile or gprof. Dmitry, Richard, David, and Mark will propose a
    solution.

Reconstruction sub-group reports

Tracking

    Naomi ??? has reported that the pattern of stereo layers in the CDC, as
    built, does not match the default geometry that we have in HDDS. Layers
    with positive stereo angles have to be swapped with those with negative
    ones. Simon is working on implementing reality.

PID

    Paul called our attention to the documentation for his new [30]analysis
    tools and [31]kinematic fitter. He encouraged us to check them out,
    literally and figuratively.

    Nathan reported some problems using the new code with SIMD use enabled.
    Paul will have a look.

Preliminary results from raw data tape simulation

    Elliott reported that the raw data format, using EVIO, is almost ready
    to use. David Abbot of the Data Acquisition group has provided a
    library to produce CODA data in block mode with a single event per
    block. The raw event plug-in for JANA was written some time ago and
    David has been working on parsing the EVIO data. The FADC-125,
    FADC-250, F1-TDC, 32-channel and 48-channel versions are supported at
    present.

    David produced a file of Pythia data with the level 1 trigger applied.
    Elliott sees an average of 6700 words per event. If crates with no hits
    are eliminated, the size goes down to 4800 words per event. There is
    another level of reduction from eliminating hit-less boards which has
    not been done yet.

    We are close to being able to run this data through the reconstruction.

CCDB Improvements

    Dmitry presented a recently implemented scheme to allow choice of
    various versions of the calibration constants at run-time. See [32]talk
    for details.

    Mark mentioned that Dmitry has changed the structure of the CCDB to
    reduce reliance on a single API library in C++. Previously, the Python
    scripts used this library wrapped using the SWIG package. Now the
    Python scripts use SQLAlchemy to encapsulate database operations and
    SWIG is no longer used at all. Write operations using the C++ API are
    deprecated. This will make the code base easier to maintain and extend
    as well as simplifying the move to other database engines. The change
    was motivated by adopting SQLite as a server-less solution for local
    access to constants.

Action Items

     1. Develop a profiling regime.
     2. Star a mini-challenge on the new farm nodes.

    Retrieved from
"https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_October_17,_2012"

References

   30. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Mattione_GlueX_Analysis_Factories
   31. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Mattione_GlueX_Kinematic_Fitting
   32. https://halldweb1.jlab.org/talks/2012-4Q/ccdb_10_17_2012.pptx%7Chis

-- 
Mark M. Ito
Jefferson Lab (www.jlab.org)
(757)269-5295