From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri Sep 26 15:25:27 2003 Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:25:10 +0100 (BST) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Clive Davenhall , Eckhard Sutorius , Harvey MacGillivray , Ian Bond , Mike Read , Nigel Hambly , Bob Mann Cc: Andrew Lawrence , Peredur Williams , Jim Emerson , Andy Adamson , Mike Irwin Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes: 26 September 2003 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 26th September 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Present: JMS, ETWS, IAB, HMG, PMW, NCH, RGM, MAR Apologies: AL, JPE Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: MAR to progress enhanced web access functionality of the SSA. (good progress: VOTable format is now implemented, and integration of pixel access via the new interfaces is nearly finished). - all done and discharged (thanks to all concerned!) Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: ALL to review risk register and think of any new internal or external risks that should be documented in the risk register. ACTION: RGM to progress design of a web cookbook based around the 20 Queries. (started) ACTION: NCH, ETWS to create schema-driven tags for ingest procedure, and to code up proto-curation populating scripts for the WSA for test purposes. (schema tags to drive ingest are being implemented in revised schemas in the CVS. Proto-curation populating scripts have yet to be started) - continuing; thanks for progressing these. Actions carried forward from 19/09/03 meeting: ---------------------------------------------- ACTION: PMW to liaise with AL to make sure that Compute Support are made aware, from the highest "official" level, of our requirements, re. 100 Gbyte/day transfer from CASU, and to impress on them that the 1 Gbit/s FW should be their highest priority. ACTION: JPE to design and set up centralised VDFS web pages. - CONTINUE Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: PMW reminded everyone that the VDFS monthly meeting (quarterly face-to-face is scheduled for next Wednesday. The forward plan for Q4 2003 now needs to be written down in detail. ACTION: PMW & NCH to flesh out the Q4 2003 forward plan. The RG announcement has finally filtered through the University Admin; all requested WSA staff resources were funded. NCH asked what the current renewal timescale is; the default situation seems to be Sep 2004, but by slipping the IfA Cosmology RG PPARC have inadvertently synchronised this with the WFAU RG, so a slip either way of a month or so may be sensible from all points of view. Hardware: NCH reported that the disk instabilities on the new catalogue servers have reoccured. Much advice is being sought from Eclipse and JNTD; testing and monitoring continues but these problems have now held us up for well over a month. This is not a big problem from the point of view of WSA development work, but as far as releasing the new SSA service and getting UKIDSS feedback on the "look and feel" of the WSA user interface goes, this is frustrating. NCH asked the team for any thoughts on the way forward; RGM suggested seeking advice from alternative suppliers (eg. IBM & Compusys) as a means of keeping up contacts with them in addition to possibly helping to resolve the outstanding problems. NCH reported that coincidentally, Compusys have been in touch to ask if we wish to do any further test with their hardware. ACTION: NCH to contact IBM and Compusys with a thinly-veiled request for advice on the Ultra320/Tyan server instabilities. HMG reported that the pixel file node "djoser" is now awaiting attention from HME to reinstall the OS (Debian linux) and internally firewall the machine. HME has been snowed under with ssh patches this week, so HMG will re-approach HME early next week. Software: IAB reported: "Work continued on the middleware required for the ingestion of image metadata and source catalog data that are encoded in FITS files. The CVS has been updated with the latest refactored software with the additional features: - facility to parse SQL scripts to extract attribute metadata for a given table as defined within "CREATE TABLE" code blocks. Attribute metadata is extracted from predefined --/ tags in the SQL. - code to calculate HTMIDs and cartesian vector components from the RA and DEC fields. - unit conversion dictionaries built using the Standard Template Library" NCH & ETWS have been making good progress on implementing the new ingest tags in the existing WSA schema scripts. Networking: Nothing new this week. SSA: MAR reported good progress on interface enhancements. NCH reported bad news on the catalogue server hardware (see Hardware above). PMW asked the team to think about at what point the catalogue server problem should be considered as requiring drastic action (eg. complete volume redesign with limited storage and DB size so that users can at least try something). NCH suggested that we should persevere for at least a few more weeks. RGM reported a start on the SQL cook book, and asked for comments at a quick conflab after this meeting. Miscellaneous: Nothing else this week. ACTION: NCH to type up and circulate these minutes. DONM: 10am, Friday 3rd October, plate library.