1. Applications Area Issues RWL Jones GridPP16 QMUL 28 th June 2006

2. Overview All projects moving towards Service Phases –LHC experiments engaged in Service and commissioning challenges –BaBar has grid simulation service –D-Zero delivering simulation, reconstruction and analysis –QCDGrid devloping and serving a community Headline issues –Tier 1 resources were insufficient in 05Q4 and 06Q1 Some improvements now How do we handle an experiment requesting an incompatible system? –Data movement and managementis the current hot topic for the LHC experiments FTS response LFC performance

3. ATLAS Focussed on the ATLAS Distributed Analysis and the GANGA front end. Critical path Significant feedback from early adopters rapid feature enhancements in 06Q2. The major sticking point is the deployment of the ATLAS Distributed Data Management. –This is well integrated into the OSG sites (reflecting the origin of the developer effort), but has proven more problematic in the LCG. The DA effort has inevitably reduced the ATLAS input into the Production tools –GANGA is now being taken-up by the production team as their front-end. –ATLAS-wide deficiency in production tools; other FAs have been asked to address this as well. On hardware, the shortage of Tier 1 capacity, and especially the reduction of disk capacity, caused significant problems. Tier 1 activity at RAL effectively stopped for 10 days because of shortage of disk space. Lancaster has been an effective temporary relief site..

4. GANGA Tensions from serving two masters reduced Release with job-building delivered in March 2006; this is later than planned Release to support a range of application) is changed to be due in October 2006, keeping in step with the Data Challenge release cycle. –Delayed deliverable will take on-board some metadata access secondary deliverables. End-user feedback from LHCb is good. The ATLAS situation is not so good, as the DDM delays (see above) have restricted the usability. This is a matter of urgency for 06Q2.

5. LHCb Excellent reporting The ARDA metadata interface Significant testing and feedback, and is fully deployed and reported. (3.2.2 complete). AMGA based version under development, along with a GANGA plug-in to use it. Other metadata interfaces, including AMI from ATLAS have been A new DIRAC release streamlines both production and analysis jobs, and security has been enhanced; the release completes 3.3.11.

6. CMS Some changes in deliverables because LCG will now handle low-level data transfers & architectural changes in BOSS that no longer split job preparation from monitoring and tracking. Big activity in SC exercises. Tim Barass has been very active, but he has left for a job outside of HEP. IC have been working on an XML-based architecture prototype for BOSS. However, the project leader has suspended the line of development, and IC is mow working on the CLI and API. There have been problems with the PhEDEx deployment at IC, now fixed; other important services have been deployed. Would still wish to see if there are common tools/projects possible

7. BaBar Uneven reporting here The simulation reporting is skeletal! to say the least. The simulation production seems on track however. A new temporary hire at SLAC will add to the analysis effort. Analysis commentary is long but undigested More on technologies used would help

8. SAMGrid/D0 RunJob deliverables 4.2.310-13 have been completed but not yet demonstrated. The full chain tests were expected in April. The UK RAC has been working well, although manual submission has been required as the automated interface, which was just being rolled-out at IC at the end of the quarter. The associated monitoring deliverable 4.2.9 is completed.

9. QCDGrid QCDGrid releases in October 05 and May 06 –October release includes significant QCDML enhancements Lots of work on implementing local instances of ILDG Metadata catalogue interface as a web service –Some local difficulties bring in UK resources Major review of support systems Still question of whether we can share common technologies here

10. PhenoGrid No deliverables were due this quarter. There was a release of GENSER containing Herwig++ Substantial progress on Herwig++ / FORM job submission Progress now being made, after a difficult 05Q4

11. Portal/Monitor Monitor –Displayed at Supercomputing 05, CHEP06 –New monitor version –3-D graphics, Google-map functionality Portal –Portal toolkit released in January –Lots of work on VOMS proxies –Support for CALICE and T2K Already good synergies with projects like ESLEA

12. Next 06Q2 reports due by 7 th July!