Minutes of Software Tools meeting held on April 5, 1996
            =======================================================

Present:    P. Bhat, J. O'Connnell, S. Fuess, H. Greenlee, A. Jonckheere, 
            S. Krzywdzinski (minutes taker), L. Paterno, Q. Li, H. Prosper
            and S. Protopopescu.


    The agenda was the following:

    A) Update on D0/CDF/CD Code Management Joint Working Group - Alan Jonckheere

    B) Experience with Oracle DBMS                             - Jerry O'Connell

    C) Revisions to Code Development Environment               - Laura Paterno
                                                                             

    Ad A) The Group was formed to address the issues of code management 
          which are common for CDF and D0, and to develop tools basis which
          can be either used directly or adapted as needed. The members of
          the Group are:
 
                        Q. Li, H. Greenlee, A. Jonckheere  from D0
                        R. Harris, J. Bellinger            from CDF
                        P. Lebrun, L. Garren, D. Petravick from CD 

         The Group has held 5 meetings already, and actually a lot has been
         accomplished in the short period of time. 
         Details of Alan's presentation can be found on Web at URL:

                 http://www-d0.fnal.gov/~jonckhee/code_mgt/status.html

         After the presentation, a subgroup, consisting of A. Jonckheere 
         (as consultant), S. Krzywdzinski, H. Prosper and S. Protopopescu was 
         asked to make concrete recommendations on how to break up (organize)
         the D0 Library into logical modules.


    Ad B) Jerry described briefly his experience with Oracle 7 DBMS (DataBase 
          Management System), gained in design, implementation and maintenace
          of the Training database.
          Oracle 7 is a relational DBMS, which can be run on many platforms,
          including Unix and Windows. 
          The presentation quickly evolved into a lively, but sometimes chaotic,
          exchange of concerns and opinions, e.g. :

          - do we recommend one DBMS, or several, like we have now ? 
            Currently our major databases are:

                Calibration DBL3 database (ZEBRA)
                Fatmen catalog (ZEBRA)
                HDB, PROD_DB, TAPE_LOG_DB (relational databases under Rdb DBMS 
                                           developed by DEC, now under Oracle)

          - do we use DBMS which could be implemented and run on many platforms,
            or rather have servers on each supported platform for accessing 
            databases implemented on one selected platform ?
        
          - do we recommend relational (RDBMS), object (ODBMS), or 
            hybrid (ORDBMS) databases ?
            Objectivity ODBMS is pushed strongly by Jamie Shiers for use at 
            CERN, it's also used by the Sloan Digital Scan Survey; there is,
            however, at least one ODBMS, namely ObjectStore, which has virtues
            very similar to the ones Objectivity has ...

          - can DSPACK be used to store data ?

          - are we going to cover spreadsheets and PAW-like systems in our
            recommendations ?

          To streamline our discussion on databases, a subgroup was formed,
          consisting of P.Bhat, J. O'Connnell, S. Krzywdzinski (as consultant) 
          and L. Paterno.           


    Ad C) The draft on Code Development Environment recommendations is 
          available on Web at URL:

                 http://d0server1/www/lpaterno/codeenv1.htm 

          Based on the discussion on it at the previous meeting, the following 
          changes were incorporated by Laura:

          1. Names of the Group members who do not show up at our meetings 
             were removed from the authors list; the list was  augmented by 
             2 others (Herb and Lee) who participate, but were not originally
             assigned to the Group. 

          2. The adherence of all our code to the D0 coding standards was 
             upgraded from "should" to "must".

          3. Two appendices were added:

             Appendix A - Current Design Tools Available

             Appendix B - Current Compilers Available


    The next meeting is scheduled 3 weeks from the date of this meeting, on 
April 26. By that time the document on recommendations for the Code  Development
Environment shall have been reread and commented by all of us, possible
revisions resolved via e-mail,  signed off and released.    
Also the recommendations of the 2 working subgroups should be ready for
discussion at the next meeting.