IPT 1998 Progress Report

Information and Process Technology (IPT)

The IPT group identified and addressed software-engineering problems across experiments and projects, and provided common solutions. It also supported and serviced CERN project teams that produce software for HEP experiments to improve their software development practices based on defined and supported common standards, methods, and tools. The main activities included:

• Collaboration and technology transfer to the teams producing software in the experiments
• Consultancy on software engineering and information systems
• Methods and tools for software engineering
• Development of projects of general use, in co-operation with the experiments

The Software Development Tools Service (SDTS) continued selecting, evaluating, installing and maintaining some 15 commercially available tools. Following feedback from the users several tools were removed, replaced, or had their number of concurrent uses increased. The reliable set-up resulted in 9 months of uninterrupted service.

After the successful participation of the group in the OPAL Trigger Software Upgrade Project in 1997, the experiment decided to extend the project Software Development Environment to the rest of OPAL On-line. IPT provided consultancy during the deployment and ensured the maintenance for part of the system. One of the major technology transfer activities was in the domain of software quality with ATLAS, where two of the tools provided by SDTS were integrated by IPT in the development environment of DAQ Backend.

The basic idea of LIGHT (LIfecycle Global HyperText) is to make all the software documents, including code, available on the WWW, with all cross-references automatically established. Extensions to support C++ and design diagrams were applied to ATLAS, Opal, BaBar and Kloe. A major effort was put into restructuring the project and re-engineering the system to take advantage of advanced new technologies (Java, RMI, and XML). A new, more modular version (LIGHT 2) is being developed in Java. LIGHT 2 is set to reach a wider range of formats and languages and be more easily extensible in order to be able to support needs of a large number of experiments and projects.

In addition to the ongoing FrameMaker/Template support, the User Guide template package was introduced and the Technical Design Reports package updated. To take advantage of the "Save as HTML..." feature of FrameMaker 5.5, all template packages supported by IPT (PSS-05 URD, User Guides, TDR and Technical Paper) were upgraded to include the required HTML mapping information. A new generic template package, for the production of software documentation (SDLT), is under preparation.

WIRED (World-Wide-Web Interactive Remote Event Display) is a framework (written in Java) to build HEP event displays which can be used remotely. WIRED has now grown to be a framework in use and under development in several experiments, both inside and outside CERN (CHORUS, ATLAS, BaBar and D0). It has also proven to be useful to create Event Displays to explain High Energy Physics to the general public. Both CERN (in the travelling exhibition and MicroCosm) and RAL (during their open days) had such displays set up. To enable portability across all platforms WIRED was extended to use the Java Swing user interface component set. Both RMI (Remote Method Invocation) and CORBA loaders were implemented to allow for different mechanisms to load events and to connect to FORTRAN, C and C++ reconstruction programs. Special projections (fish-eye, rho-phi, rho-Z, and phi-Z) were incorporated to get a better understanding of some events. A special Java interpreter was added to allow physicists to write small scripts (in Java) to interact with their data and its display.

Participation in the CEDAR Project continued, in particular in the TOUCAN collaboration, a joint project with Eigner+Partner to develop a 100% Java WWW interface to CADIM. A first interface layer that allows a Java application to interact with CADIM was delivered. A graphical user interface layer based on Swing is under development.

Following a request from the LCB, the IPT group launched the SPIDER project. It will define and implement a modular and integrated software development environment for the LHC experiments and projects. The framework and the processes building this software development environment will provide procedures, guidelines, templates, and tools for the distributed management and engineering of HEP software systems and applications. SPIDER will co-ordinate and establish support (helpdesk, maintenance, operation) and services (consulting, training, coaching) to assist the users of this software development environment. The group prepared a project outline and project execution plan for the LCB in December.