Core Application Software Activities Ian Fisk US-CMS Physics Meeting April 20, 2001

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD2 Introduction to CAS CAS is the US-CMS Core Application Software Project  We are involved in 4 main areas è CMS Software Architecture  CARF Development  OSCAR  Detector Description Database  CAFÉ è IGUANA  Graphical User Interfaces  Visualization  Data Browsing, plotting, fitting è Distributed Data Management and Processing  Development of Production Tools  Development of Distributed Analysis Tools  Grid Prototyping  System Simulation

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD3 Introduction to CAS è Support for US Physics One of the primary reasons for hiring software professionals was to offer support to physics using and developing software.  Configuration, versioning, distribution, and documentation of US-CMS developed software.  Offering Support to users and developers when porting, optimizing, and integrating code into the CMS software environment.  Participating in training, including the periodic CMS software tutorials. è CAS Currently employs 8 software engineers at 5 institutions  25% of their time is reserved for support  Use them as resources  There is a technical support mailing list at  All the engineers are subscribed, send help requests to the list.  Support requests can also be sent to Ian he will put you in touch we the appropriate

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD4 In the Works  Today I thought I would discuss a little about analysis tools. è Developers Complain they don’t get any input from the physicists è Physicists Complain the tools being developed don’t do what they need è Thought I might excite you about what could be  CMS, through the use of the object database, has the opportunity to greatly improve data accessibility. è How well connected you are to the data. è How you interact with your derived objects è How you go between the two  Currently most users are making ntuples from the database and analyzing them. This breaks the improved connection with the data. It would be good to start taking advantage of the database for analysis.  This is all new and we are going to have to do some development (and probably learn how to use some new tools). Hopefully any pain will be well worth it at the end.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD5 View of Analysis Tools  New light weight very flexible architecture is being developed for analysis tools by Lassi Tuura è Very small kernel which loads plug-ins and profiles to define functionality è Gives a lot of options for what tools can be built  Tools rely on the functionality of CMS, ODBMS, and Grid Software. Provide the user interface and combine the functionality.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD6 Potential Tools  CERN Lizard Project should handle PAW functionality: histogram creation, manipulation, and plotting. è Lizard keeps CMS from having to support a fully functional plotting packing è Need to integrate it into our environment. Currently in evaluation.  Deep and Shallow Copies of the Data base have a variety of applications. è Allow users to store their own derived data linked back to the events. è Replace part or large portions of an event, while keeping the rest stored in the database. è A wizard to handle creation and control would be useful.  Need the ability to place cuts on persistent and derived quantities, create histograms, browse data, plot histograms, etc. è Need a replacement for ntuples.  Need to store derived data and link back to data in database. Tags are a good candidate. è We need an easy to use interface: handle interactive, batch, scripted sessions, etc.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD7 Visualization Tools  Analysis Tools for detector and event visualization are already in good shape. è At the time of the functional prototype release about half of the desirable reconstructed physics objects could be visualized. è Ianna Gaponenko is working with the PRS Groups to complete the second half.  At the last ORCA tutorial there was a session on visualization. Users were instructed how to add there own objects to be visualized.  It’s on the web. CERNTutorialWeek_ / Give it a try if you have a moment.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD8 Potential Accessibility Improvements  The event at the far right is very signal-like.  It would be very nice to see what the event looks like.  At least for this experiment the information required to visualize the event is several layers up: ntuple, two layers of summary formats. Visualizing is difficult because one needs to cut on the event value, find what event it is, go back to the right summary file, plot the event.  The database could allow you to click on the event in the histogram and have the the option to visualize the event or display its properties.  The object database stores the connections between objects. The objects that make up the histogram can lead back to higher levels.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD9 Potential Process Improvements  How was the histogram on the right made? Could it be reproduced? Could the analysis that made the histogram be reproduced?  PAW writes history into a last.kumac file. Helpful, but something of a pain to reproduce a complicated analysis. Easily overwritten  Maybe it would be interesting if the analysis tools kept the commands that were used to make the histogram: samples used, selections cuts, plotting Instructions, etc.  This would make analysis more reproducible by the user and people trying to verify the results.  Clearly a feature to turn on and off.

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD10 Input is Needed  In order to make reasonable analysis tools. There needs to be some input from folks who perform analysis. The Typical Meeting è Developers: What do you physicists want? è Physicists: PAW FUNCTIONALITY! è Developers: What else? We built a Object Oriented Database there is a lot we can do with it. è Physicists: We are too old to learn something new. Then someone usually starts singing a few verses of the paw song, the chorus goes something like this. “Oh Paw, Oh Paw, Oh Paw, Oh Paw, Since the first release we’ve been in awe. You gave us results that we were yearning without having to do a lot of learning. While Developers may come with something new, we’ll never ever abandon you.”

CAS Ian M. Fisk, UCSD11 Outlook  CAFÉ Analysis Task Force is trying to create a requirements document. This will be fed back into the development program. è They meet every other week è There will be requirements and desires è Input is needed to create both lists è Contributions and Participation are more than welcome  Analysis tools are starting to be on the critical path. If we intend the tools to be used for the analysis in the physics TDR, preliminary tools are needed by the end of the year. è Starting this summer there will be development plans using brave test users.  There will certainly be “paw functionality”. If that’s all there is, we’ve failed to reach our potential.  People seem afraid of the unknown è It doesn’t have to be unknown. Contribute to the definition.