Report on the LCG Applications Area

1
Report on the LCG Applications Area

• Torre Wenaus, BNL/CERN
• LCG Applications Area Manager
• http//cern.ch/lcg/peb/applications
• LHCC Meeting
• May 22, 2003

2
Outline

• Organization and overview
• Implementing the Architecture Blueprint
• Personnel
• Schedule and planning
• Brief project status
• POOL, SEAL, PI, Simulation, SPI
• External participation, collaboration
• Concluding remarks

3
Applications Area Organisation
applications manager
architects forum
decisions strategy
applications area meeting
Simulation project
PI project
SEAL project
POOL project
SPI project
consultation
4
Management and Communication

• Architects Forum
• Attendees architects, project leaders, EP/SFT
  leader
• Good atmosphere, effective, agreement generally
  comes easily. No problems so far.
• Minutes public after internal circulation
• Meetings 1-2/month
• Applications area meeting
• 25-50 attendees local and remote
• Project status, release news, activities of
  interest (internal and external), software usage
  and feedback
• Meetings 2-3/month
• Many meetings at project and work package level
• We promote having them in the afternoon with a
  phone connection

5
Focus on Experiment Need

• Project structured and managed to ensure a focus
  on real experiment needs
• SC2/RTAG process to identify, define (need-driven
  requirements), initiate and monitor common
  project activities in a way guided by the
  experiments themselves
• Architects Forum to involve experiment architects
  in day to day project management and execution
• Open information flow and decision making
• Direct participation of experiment developers in
  the projects
• Tight iterative feedback loop to gather user
  feedback from frequent releases
• Early deployment and evaluation of LCG software
  in experiment contexts
• Success defined by experiment adoption and
  production deployment

Substantive evaluation and feedback still to
come, as is (of course) adoption and production
deployment
6
Applications Area Projects

• Software Process and Infrastructure (SPI)
  (operating A.Aimar)
• Librarian, QA, testing, developer tools,
  documentation, training,
• Persistency Framework (POOL)
  (operating D.Duellmann)
• POOL hybrid ROOT/relational data store
• Core Tools and Services (SEAL)
  (operating P.Mato)
• Foundation and utility libraries, basic framework
  services, object dictionary and whiteboard, math
  libraries, (grid enabled services)
• Physicist Interface (PI)
  (operating V.Innocente)
• Interfaces and tools by which physicists directly
  use the software. Interactive analysis,
  visualization, (distributed analysis grid
  portals)
• Simulation
  (launched T.Wenaus et al)
• Generic framework, Geant4, FLUKA integration,
  generator services

The set of projects is complete unless/until
a distributed analysis project is opened
7
Project Relationships
8
Implementing the Architecture Blueprint

• Use what exists almost all work leverages
  existing stuff
• ROOT, Gaudi/Athena components, Iguana components,
  CLHEP, Aida, HepUtilities, SCRAM, Oval, NICOS,
  Savannah, Boost, MySQL, GSL, Minuit, gcc-xml,
  RLS,
• Component-ware followed, and working e.g.
  rapidity of integration of SEAL components into
  POOL
• Object dictionary In place and meeting POOL
  needs application now expanding to interactivity
• Component bus both Python environment and its
  integration with ROOT/CINT progressing well
• Object whiteboard Still to come
• Distributed operation essentially no activity,
  still not in scope
• ROOT The user/provider relation is working
  good ROOT/POOL cooperation POOL gets needed
  mods, ROOT gets debugging/development input

9
Domain Decomposition
Products mentioned are examples not a
comprehensive list
Project activity in all expected areas except
grid services
10
Applications Area Personnel Status

• Personnel spreadsheets of apps area, EP/SFT and
  LCG merged into a single LCG-managed spreadsheet
• Consistent and current information on
  contributions, activities
• LCG apps area hires essentially complete
• 22 working target in Sep 2001 LCG proposal was
  23
• Contributions from UK, Spain, Switzerland,
  Germany, Sweden, Israel, Portugal, US, India, and
  Russia
• Similar contribution level from CERN (IT and
  EP/SFT people without experiment affiliation)
• Gathering of people in EP/SFT under John Harvey
  is working very well
• Similar again from experiments (including EP/SFT
  with expt affiliation)

http//lcgapp.cern.ch/project/mgmt/AppManpower.xls
superseded this week by merged LCG spreadsheet
11
Personnel
People FTEs
Total LCG hires 22 21.4
Working directly for apps area projects 17 16.6
ROOT 2 2.0
Grid integration work with experiments 3 2.8
Apps area project contributions from
IT 4 3.3
EP/SFT not experiment specific 18 16.6
EP/SFT experiment specific 8 5.0
Experiments outside EP/SFT 30 13.2
Total directly working on apps area projects 77 54.6
Overall applications area total 82 59.4
12
Personnel Sources (FTEs)
13
Current Personnel Distribution
14
FTEs by Source and Activity
  POOL SPI SEAL PI Simu Mgmt ROOT Grid
LCG funded personnel 4.70 5.70 1.10 0.50 4.80 2.00 2.80
IT personnel 2.30 1.00
EP/SFT non-expt specific 0.10 2.50 0.50 8.00 0.80 2.00 0.50
Experiments 4.50 1.10 3.50 1.20 1.75 1.00 3.60
Total 11.50 7.90 7.10 2.20 14.55 1.80 7.60 3.30
LCG apps area project activities
15
Comparing reality with the Blueprint resource plan
  POOL SPI SEAL PI Simu Mgmt ROOT Grid
LCG funded personnel 3.90 5.70 1.30 0.50 4.80 2.00 2.80
IT personnel 3.10 1.00
EP/SFT non-expt specific 0.10 2.00 0.90 8.00 0.80 2.00 0.50
Experiments 4.50 1.10 3.30 0.80 1.75 1.20 2.20
Total 11.50 7.90 7.10 2.20 14.55 1.80 6.20 3.30
Comparing the plan from the Blueprint RTAG Comparing the plan from the Blueprint RTAG Comparing the plan from the Blueprint RTAG
Blueprint plan - present scope 10 7 7.5 4 15
Blueprint plan full expected scope 11 7 9.5 12 17 ie. 13 more ie. 13 more
i.e. adding condDB -- grid grid, vis DD
16
Personnel Resources Required and Available
Blue Available and pledged effort
Future estimate based on 20 LCG, 16 CERN, 23
experiments i.e. Present LCGCERN, and reaching
10 ATLAS, 10 CMS, 3 LHCb In addition, ALICE
contributes 4.5 FTEs via ROOT
17
Messages in this data

• The apps area is getting the mandated job done
  with the manpower levels estimated as required by
  the blueprint RTAG
• Manpower is being used efficiently, in the
  mandated places
• In every project, the manpower external to the
  experiments (LCG, IT, some EP/SFT) exceeds or
  equals that contributed by the experiments
• Common resources used in common are making these
  projects possible
• Experiment participation in the projects exceeds
  13 FTEs
• The experiments are directly invested and
  participating our projects are their projects,
  and often use their software
• Another 13 FTEs needed to complete the
  anticipated scope
• With much of it (8 FTEs) grid-related

18
Contributions to experiment effort

• In the 9/2001 LCG proposal, 6 FTEs to the
  experiments for integration of experiment
  applications with the grid
• Present status 5 FTEs identified (3 working,
  2 to be hired)
• Two full time LCG people in ATLAS and ALICE (2
  FTE)
• One GDB/ALICE (mostly ALICE) LCG person (.8 FTE)
• EP/SFT person half-time in CMS (0.5 FTE)
• Made possible by LCG people filling the hole
• Two LCG hires in priority list (INFN,Germany) for
  LHCb, CMS (2FTE)
• Will assign people from the projects to specific
  experiments to help with take-up of LCG software
• A fraction, not all of their time
• The person may be an experiment person in some
  cases!
• This is in the works now in POOL

19
/- 90 Day Milestones
20
L1 Milestones (1)
On target, except with serious evaluation of
releases by the experiments only recently
started, it will take work to make it
production-capable
Voided by continuing absence from scope
21
L1 Milestones (2)
Voided by continuing absence from scope
22
Distributed Analysis Status

• 14 months after launch, there is (almost) no G
  in the LCG applications area
• This is disruptive to the project and contrary to
  expectations at launch (estimate then
  2002Q4/2003Q1)
• 50 of our L1 LHCC milestones are out the window
• Personnel idling, thanks to the SC2
• Have to deflect people interested in
  collaborating
• POOL needs an understanding of its metadata
  responsibilities will come when this gets
  attention
• The LCG has no involvement in grid-enabled/grid-en
  abling applications.
• The present starting to develop contingency
  plans situation with middleware highlights the
  fact the LCG should be involved in applications
  the level at which real-world problems are
  exposed and workaround needs are identified and
  can then be acted on
• The LCG cannot otherwise meet its responsibility
  to ensure LHC computing capability is in place

23
POOL Schedule Tracking
24
MS Project Integration POOL Milestones
25
Apps area planning materials

• Planning page linked from applications area page
• Project plans for the various projects
• WBS, schedule (milestones deliverables)
• Personnel spreadsheet
• Merged into overall LCG project spreadsheet
• Applications area plan document overall project
  plan
• Incomplete draft
• Applications area plan spreadsheet overall
  project plan
• High level schedule, personnel resource
  requirements
• Risk analysis (new)

http//lcgapp.cern.ch/project/mgmt/
26
Applications Area Risk Analysis
27
The only current Level 4 risk licensing

• We must have a GPL-type license for applications
  area software
• A position I have stated, decisively agreed with
  in strong statements from all four experiments
• We rely on GPL software such as GSL and MySQL
• Commercial options on some, such as MySQL, is not
  a defensible option in our community
• Trends of recent years clearly indicate we should
  not build barriers to using GPL software
• It is an issue because an agreement with PPARC
  exists that says the LCG will use essentially the
  EDG license, which is non-GPL
• Should be close to being settled (positively)

28
Persistency Framework (POOL) Project

• Dirk Duellmann

• To deliver the physics data store for ATLAS, CMS,
  LHCb
• POOL V1.0 released last week
• Preparatory to the L1 LHCC milestone next month
• Almost feature complete with respect to June
  needs focus now on debugging, performance,
  documentation
• On target to meet the June milestone
• All functionality asked for by the experiments
  for the June production release should be there
• Should provide stably supported (1 year) format
  for data files
• Serious experiment trials and feedback for
  releases has only just started
• We will surely uncover bugs and surprises we
  hope not major
• Expect to be ready to deploy on LCG-1 in July
• Initial users CMS, ATLAS, later LHCb

29
POOL (2)

• The next several months of serious trials will
  tell how close or far are we from a truly usable
  product
• Manpower situation not bad
• Temporary shortfalls in manpower from experiments
  made up with increased contributions from IT/DB
• Effort available as data migration of COMPASS et
  al is completed
• Dirk not asking for new manpower
• Sent SC2 a proposal to bring common conditions
  database work into project scope (would be a work
  package distinct from POOL)

30
Core Libraries and Services (SEAL) Project

• Pere Mato

• Provide foundation and utility libraries and
  tools, basic framework services, object
  dictionary, component infrastructure
• Facilitate coherence of LCG software and
  integration with non-LCG software
• Development uses/builds on existing software from
  experiments (e.g. Gaudi, Iguana elements) and
  C, HEP communities (e.g. Boost)
• Basically on schedule, and manpower is OK
• Successfully delivering POOLs needs, the top
  priority
• CLHEP accepted our proposal to host the project
• Also reflects appeal of SPI-supported services
• Math library project incorporated into SEAL as
  work package
• Attention to grid services on hold

31
SEAL Schedule
Release Date Status Description (goals)
V 0.1.0 14/02/03 internal Establish dependency between POOL and SEAL Dictionary support generation from header files
V 0.2.0 31/03/03 public Essential functionality sufficient for the other existing LCG projects (POOL) Foundation library, system abstraction, etc. Plugin management
V 0.3.0 16/05/03 internal Improve functionality required by POOL Basic framework base classes
V 1.0.0 30/06/03 public Essential functionality sufficient to be adopted by experiments Collection of basic framework services Scripting support
Released 1426/02/03
Released 04/04/03
32
Physicist Interface (PI) Project

• Vincenzo Innocente

• Analysis Services active
• AIDA and its interfaces to ROOT, POOL, SEAL
• Improvements to AIDA interface to histograms,
  tuples implemented and offered to users for
  evaluation
• Evaluation in progress
• Changes make AIDA more amenable to a ROOT
  implementation, which is proceeding
• Will be the supported LCG implementation of AIDA
• Analysis Environment partly on hold by SC2
• Interactivity, visualization, bridge to/from ROOT
• Interactivity and ROOT bridge joint work with
  SEAL
• Pool Grid PI on hold by SC2
• Event Detector Visualization on hold by SC2

33
Simulation Project

• Torre Wenaus et al

• Activity is ramping up following a work plan
  approved by the SC2 in March
• Principal development activity will be a generic
  simulation framework
• Expect to build on existing ALICE work
• Incorporates CERN/LHC Geant4 work
• FLUKA team participating for framework
  integration, physics validation
• Simulation physics validation subproject very
  active already
• Generator services subproject starting up under
  MC4LHC oversight
• Shower parameterisation subproject not yet
  fleshed out

34
Project Organization
Geant4 Project
FLUKA Project
Experiment Validation
MC4LHC
Simulation Project Leader
Subprojects
Framework
Geant4
FLUKA integration
Physics Validation
Shower Param
Generator Services
WP
WP
WP
WP
WP
Work packages
WP
WP
WP
WP
WP
WP
WP
WP
35
Simulation Subprojects

• Generic simulation framework
• Subproject leader Andrea DellAcqua
• Geant4
• Subproject leader John Apostolakis
• FLUKA integration
• Subproject leader Alfredo Ferrari
• Physics validation
• Subproject leader Fabiola Gianotti
• Generator services
• Subproject leader Paolo Bartalini

36
Simulation Project High Level Milestones

• 2003/6 Decide generic framework high level
  design, implementation approach, software to be
  reused
• 2003/6 Generator librarian and alpha version of
  support infrastructure in place
• 2003/7 Simulation physics requirements revisited
• 2003/8 Detector description proposal to SC2
• 2003/9 1st cycle of EM physics validation
  complete
• 2003/12 Generic simulation framework prototype
  available with G4 and FLUKA engines
• 2004/1 1st cycle of hadronic physics validation
  complete
• 2004/3 Simulation test and benchmark suite
  available
• 2004/9 First generic simulation framework
  production release
• 2004/12 Final physics validation document
  complete

37
Software Process and Infrastructure (SPI) Project

• Alberto Aimar

• All tools and services in place, most in use,
  some (nightly build system) still being deployed
• Important contributions from experiments (SCRAM,
  Oval, NICOS, )
• Policies on code standards and organization,
  testing, documentation almost complete
• Good QA activity, applied mainly to POOL so far
• Currently navigating through personnel
  transitions
• Planned transitions of personnel to other
  projects
• Generally with a continuing maintenance level
  of SPI participation
• Two new LCG full timers added in Dec/Jan, another
  expected in June, also two new participants from
  EP/SFT
• Manpower level OK, we just have to sustain an
  adequate level
• Plan and personnel time profile at the end of
  this month
• Savannah portal a great success with 54 projects,
  275 users at present
• Used by LCG-App, -GD, -Fabric, 3 experiments,
  CLHEP

38
Savannah
39
Documentation and training

• All projects instrumented with code referencing
  tools (LXR, dOxygen, viewCVS), but work needed on
  written documentation
• June releases targeted for complete user
  documentation
• Documentation requirements being formalized with
  SPI providing guidelines and templates
• Documentation requirements as prerequisites to a
  release
• Doing the same with testing
• Active training program
• Very successful ROOT course second has now been
  scheduled
• SCRAM course ready, public course soon
• POOL, SEAL courses will follow, after the June
  major releases
• Starting to record courses for web presentation
  (Syncomat)
• Apps area document registry established

40
External Participation

• Examples
• POOL collections (US)
• POOL RDBMS data storage back end (India)
• POOL tests (UK)
• POOL-driven ROOT I/O development debugging (US)
• SEAL basic framework services (France)
• SPI tools Oval, NICOS (France, US)
• Math libraries (India)
• Opportunities
• Throughout the simulation project
• Several PI work packages
• Tried to engage an external group in one didnt
  work
• Unit and integration tests
• E.g. POOL storage manager, persistency manager,
  data service
• End-user examples

41
External Participation

• Engaging external participation well is hard, but
  we are working at it
• Problems on both sides
• Being remote is difficult
• More than it needs to be e.g. VRVS physical
  facilities issue improving this month, but more
  improvements needed and much too difficult to
  arrange
• Remote resources can be harder to control and
  fully leverage, and may be less reliably
  available
• We work around it and live with it, because we
  must support and encourage remote participation

42
Collaborations

• Examples
• Apart from the obvious (the experiments, ROOT)
• GD Requirements from apps for LCG-1 Savannah
• Fabrics POOL and SPI hardware, Savannah-Castor
• GTA Grid file access,
• Grid projects EDG-RLS, EDG testbed contribution,
  software packaging/distribution
• Geant4
• FLUKA
• CLHEP hosting

43
Take-up in the experiments

• The real measure of success or failure
• Experiments now actively engaged in evaluation,
  integration, and planning deployment
• ATLAS integrating POOL and SEAL into experiment
  framework and infrastructure
• No significant problems so far, but not yet
  exercising POOL/SEAL functionality strenuously
• CMS evaluated POOL and decided this month to
  target it for early (July) deployment in
  simulation production (PCP leading up to DC04)
• LHCb will begin this summer
• Beginning to define project milestones measuring
  take-up, tied to these experiment programs
• As mentioned, will assign project people to assist

44
Coherence and Focus

• We are developing the coherent, component based
  architecture we are charged to build
• Coherence evident in cross-project (POOL, SEAL,
  PI) collaboration on defining, developing,
  deploying components
• Apart from ROOT already does it all arguments,
  apps area development efforts are not redundant
  and duplicative
• Approach/design is chosen, in some cases after
  short explorations of the options, and set as the
  basis for work
• Efforts that are divergent, redundant, or under
  consideration are isolated (in contrib) and not
  accounted as project effort (and are few in
  number)

45
Concluding Remarks

• POOL, SEAL and some PI software is now out there
• Take-up is starting
• On target for major June POOL/SEAL releases
• L1 milestone set a year ago should be met
• Manpower is appropriate
• is at the level the experiments themselves
  estimated is required
• is being used effectively and efficiently for the
  common good
• is delivering what we are mandated to deliver
• Apps area is impatient to have grid-related work
  in scope