Meeting Minutes

[David Lawrence <davidl@jlab.org>]

Hi All,

    I've written up minutes from yesterday's software meeting. They can 
be found at:

http://www.jlab.org/~davidl/HallD/Minutes/Software_2006_07_10

and are also copied below.

Regards,
-David

==========================================================
In attendance:

David L., Elliott W. Simon T., Matt S., Richard J.,
Nikolay, K., Zisis P., Rafael H., Blake L.

The meeting agenda is posted on the Wiki at:

http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/July_10%2C2006


Agenda:

1 Review Software Task list
2 AOT

It was suggested that we add a discussion of Software Coding
Conventions to the agenda. In the end though we ran over time
and decided to delay that until the next meeting.

Future meeting suggestions:
- Smart Pointers
- BCAL beamtest simulations


============================================

Review Software Task list
-----------------------

The software task list can be found at:
http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/Software_tasks.php

The entire software task list was reviewed. Some highlights
from the discussions follow:

HDGeant: A new document was recently added to the DocDB
summarizing the current state of the detector geometry as
defined to HDGeant. All systems except possibly the TOF
and UPV need to be reviewed and updated by the persons
responsible for each subsystem. Richard noted that he knows
of at least a few differences between the geometry currently
in HDGeant and the baseline design. He also noted that the
current geometry is almost certainly an underestimate of
the amount of material in the detector. This will be important
to get realistic background rates from HDGeant.

HDDM: Richard noted that work is underway on a new C++,
stream oriented wrapper for HDDM that includes features
such as compression/decompression.

HDDS: Essentially stable now. It now has the ability to
turn off magnetic field in the BCAL (for example) to
speed up processing time. There was some discussion about
how CLAS12 is still strongly considering adopting it. They
are looking at the possibility of specifying hits read-out
in XML as well so one does not need to write accompanying
code with changes to the geometry. We agreed that we will
wait to see what they come up with and then decide if it
will be useful for us.

Web Portal: Zisis reported that they are starting to work
on upgrading the portal from a patched version 5 to version
7. Richard asked about certificate support and Zisis said it
did have one standard in v5, but isn't sure what v7 offers.

GRID: Richard has now installed his OpenShop package on
clusters at Regina, Indiana, FSU and UConn. It can be used
by remote sites to submit simulation jobs. OpenShop keeps
a record of the jobs run and allows access to them from
other users. Interested persons should contact Richard about
getting a certificate and learning how to use it.
Matt S. reminded us about the e-mail sent out a few weeks
ago about the grant program "Physics in the Information
Frontiers". He suggested we should put a proposal together
for developing software for doing distributed simulations
across remote clusters. The proposal would involve maily
manpower.

Calibration Database: Nikolay reported that he has been
working on this and will present what he's done in 2 weeks.

BCAL reconstruction: Work is stalled on this in order to
focus on the beam test.

BCAL Simulations: The simulation of the BCAL beam test
continues to be refined with things like the CLAS target
being added. Blake L. is doing several simulations with
the various comfigurations of the BCAL module during the
test. He will present something at the next meeting (in
two weeks).

Cherenkov: This is stalled completely. Richard noted that
he should get at least a 3 month "heads up" to incorporate
a Cherenkov detector into the simulation before anyone
should expect to use it.

FCAL: Matt S. reported that he is working to finalize on
a channel count. He and Richard will communicate offline
to discuss the possibility of porting Richard's Rad-Phi
C++ reconstruction code for the FCAL.

FDC: Work on the reconstruction software has stopped with
the departure of Craig B. Simon has done some research on
reconstruction techniques and is well positioned to serve
in an advisory role if a person can be found to write the
code.

TOF: Matt S. reported that they still have some cosmic tests
to do. Indiana plans to try and locate a graduate student
to work on the code under Ryan Mitchell's guidance.

Trigger Simulation: This is now considered an orphan project.
David L. agreed to discuss this with Dave Doughty the next
time he saw him.


--- Suggested changes to Software task list page ---

Background simulations: Richard has recently done some
simulations of the backgrounds in the tagger building
due to the electron beam dump. The background rates
in the GlueX detector need to be studied with the more
realistic magnetic field map and a geometry that contains
more materials. This is one of our top priorities.

Add Elog item with Greg Riccardi as contact.

-- 

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