From nch@roe.ac.uk Sat Dec 6 16:15:16 2003 Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 12:26:32 +0000 (GMT) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius , Harvey MacGillivray , Ian Bond , Mike Read , Nigel Hambly , Bob Mann Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Clive Davenhall , Andrew Lawrence , Andy Adamson , Peter Shillan , John Taylor , Jim Emerson , Martin Hill , Mike Irwin , Peredur Williams Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes: 5 December 2003 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 5th December 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Present: NCH, HTMG, ETWS, MAR, IAB, PMW, JDT Apologies: JPE, JMS, AL, MCH, RGM, GPS Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: RGM to inquire as to storage requirements and more accurate schedule (especially ETA) for the SDSS DR1 sneaker net box. Closed: updates have been received by email from Istvan Csabai and in person from Ani Thakar: looks like early in the new year for the 1 Tbyte DR1 box; DR2 (2 Tbyte) will start its rounds in the spring. See Hardware below. 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. Defered until top level plan is explicitly defined. PMW tabled the VISTA risk register as an example. ACTION: RGM to progress design of a web cookbook based around the 20 Queries. ACTION: JPE to design and set up centralised VDFS web pages. Progressing. (there is now a link to it from our WSA Twiki). - continuing; thanks for progressing these. Actions from 28/11/03 meeting: ------------------------------ ACTION: NCH to stage intermediate Source files in thoth, and email Francois Oschenbien at CDS when the first file(s) is/are ready for transfer. No progress due to more pressing matters and Astro-WISE visit. Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: PMW updated the team with the latest funding situation, where the GSC requested revised bid for the VDFS part of VOProc has been put back to a Jan 13th 2004 deadline. The committee wish to see a revised bid for funding more including spend to the present and a forward look to end March 2005. NCH pointed out the TWiki link to the CASU fortnightly minutes and their agenda item "Comments on WFAU meeting minutes"; requested that the WSA team read the CASU minutes as the become available and make comments at the meetings to be minuted here. Hardware: HMG reported that the isolated power supply for the C1 WSA hardware appears to be going ahead; he will keep an eye on things and notify the team of any power outages. NCH reiterated that this was a good thing and should result in almost constant uptime of the server hardware, given the deployement of the UPSs. PMW pointed out that now we have the DR1/2 storage requirements we can plan some medium term storage acquisition; NCH & PMW will meet offline to flesh this out as a part of the forward-look spend for the GSC papers. MAR reported that HME has OKed making port 8080 on thoth accessible (more below). Software: MAR reported: "Finally got the servlets to run under the security manager on Tomact grendel12. Horst has copied the additions to the catalina.policy file (cvs) over to Thoth Tomcat and it to now appears to be running the test ahmose acccess (thoth/ssa/radial_test.html thoth/ssa/sql_test.html) under security. This was I hope the final hurdle in making thoth:8080 public. Looked at non-web browser access to the SSA and WSA. Should be possible to set something up similar to SkyServer. One way they do it is to provide a Python script which accesses their web service(?). Possibly set up a servelt running a DB connection pool to service these and other requests (eg pixel access)." On the subject of ingest testing, IAB & NCH spoke with MJI during the Groningen visit (see below) and MJI has undertaken to produce some pretend WFCAM FITS files to test the CASU/WFAU interface and ingest procedure at our end. ETWS reported that the installation of SW on djoser is complete, as specified in the TWiki wish list (this includes GridFTP, Python 2.3.2, Egenix mx middleware, etc). and asked IAB to check out that everything that is needed by the curation client software is there ACTION: IAB to check that all necessary SW for curation client functionality is present on djoser. SSA: NCH reported continuing problems with transaction logs on the final SSA installation; refactoring of scripts is progressing and is nearly finished. Miscellaneous: NCH reported a very useful visit to Astro-WISE at Groningen, and highlighted some key points relevant to WSA development. A TWiki report will be written with verbose info concerning the various topics discussed. ACTION: NCH to write a TWiki report, and IAB & ETWS to contribute to this, concerning the two day visit to Astro-WISE at Groningen. NCH reported that following on from the UKIDSS meeting, a newsletter containing the SSA/WSA request for test driving was due out on Tues next; in the meantime, feedback from first looks has started to come in. Following on from the the ingest test discussions with CASU, MJI has suggested the possibility of testing using the northern Galactic Plane INT-WFC Halpha survey being undertaken by the same science consortium that is eploiting the SHS. Basic stats are 2 Tbyte of pixel data, around 1700 individual pointings, RIHa filters, GP surveyed to +/-5 degrees north from Dec=-2ish; source extraction will be the basic APM/S'COS style 32 parameterisation. Some discussion ensued, and it is clear that doing this is scientifically worthwhile, but would not test specific software (only the principles of the CASU/WFAU interface), so this is should be kept as a separate thing to testing WSA software (which can only be done with fake WFCAM FITS data). PMW suggested that we say a tentative yes, subject to resource constraints (eg. no promises over fully fledged relational modelling and user interface). NCH reported that there is a consortium meeting (at ICSTM on the 15th?) and that it might be a good idea if someone could go and make more formal contacts; PMW volunteered ACTION: PMW to check out the time/place of the next INT-WFC Ha survey meeting and attend if possible. NCH reported that discussions with Ani Thakar on Tues evening had given new info on the DR1/2 sneaker net boxes (see above) and that he would endeavour to encourage speedy release of HTM2 when he returned to JHUat the end of this week. DONM: 10am, Friday 12th December, plate library.