Comments (May 2001) to Nov 2000 PCAP comments and recommendations: =========================================================================== == Hire two persons for database development. Increase the presence of == U.S. developers at CERN. =========================================================================== Database hires at ANL completed by mid January. Early this year we submitted an NSF proposal to support three software developers at CERN. We have received no word on its approval. We continue to support one software professional at CERN from existing funds. In prioritizing any new funds, first priority will be given to sustaining the core development and software support plan at ANL, BNL and LBNL before funds are allocated to increasing CERN presence. =========================================================================== == We encourage the reassessment of the data management strategy in == collaboration with other experiments. =========================================================================== This reassessment is in the works. US ATLAS is involved at the LHC level (the working group being planned); the US LHC level (US LHC common project plans include collaborative work in evaluating alternative database technologies, in particular relational and object relational); and within ATLAS where the US is/will be active in assessing Objectivity, ROOT I/O and relational DB tools (at least). ========================================================================== == Get International ATLAS to take a formal decision on Athena =========================================================================== International ATLAS has greatly dragged out this decision process, with the final meeting of the review committee taking place in March. No report has yet been released. Preliminary reports and collaboration sentiment leave no doubt that Athena will be accepted as the ATLAS framework. =========================================================================== == The quality control group should be strengthened with priority given == to applying quality control procedures to the framework =========================================================================== Quality control activity was strengthened shortly after the review when US ATLAS volunteered our BNL based software professional developer to participate in priority QA tasks. He led the editing and release of the official ATLAS C++ coding standards in January. He also did preliminary work on enabling the CodeWizard software validation tool in the ATLAS code management system; CodeWizard will test ATLAS software for compliance with the established standards. He has however recently left the group and is now being replaced. The other important new quality assurance activity has been in improving software test and validation tools, with a particular motivation being their application in framework development; the Chief Architect has been closely involved in the design and early application of the tools. We have developed a facility which produces nightly builds of the full ATLAS software based on the most recent tagged versions of packages. It provides immediate email feedback to developers on newly introduced software bugs and incompatibilities. This system addresses current ATLAS difficulties in assembling functional software releases in a timely way by providing quantitative feedback on current software quality continuously, so the convergence of the software base toward a releasable body of code can be tracked. Any given nightly can be isolated, preserved and used to define a release, so that a high quality build can be preserved and deployed to general users and developers. We anticipate extending the system's assessments of software quality beyond simple 'did it build' criteria to incorporate more substantive metrics provided by eg. unit tests. This facility was implemented at BNL with substantial input to the design and functionality from LBNL. =========================================================================== == Negotiate with DOE and NSF the required funding profile for == software development =========================================================================== Boy, how we try! =========================================================================== == Complete and debug the WBS. Unify the ATLAS PBS with the U.S. ATLAS == WBS as soon as possible. Some areas need to be developed in more == detail. =========================================================================== The software WBS is substantially complete. Relatively minor revisions and additions will continue as International ATLAS proceeds to integrate our WBS into an International ATLAS one, while we continue to aim for as much commonality as possible. From the U.S. side, the integration of our WBS with the ATLAS PBS is complete. XProject now supports projections from common sources of both the U.S. WBS and ATLAS PBS. XProject is now in use by International ATLAS to incorporate the greater detail of the U.S. WBS into the ATLAS PBS.