From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri May 28 12:29:34 2004 Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 11:35:53 +0100 (BST) 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: 28th May 2004 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 28th May 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Present: NCH, IAB, RGM, JDT, MAR Apologies: MCH, JPE, HMG, GPS, PMW, JMS, AL, ETWS DONM: 10am, Friday 4th June 2004, plate library. Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: NCH & IAB to meet before the next meeting to make a "to do" list. Discharged: see Software below ACTION: NCH to chase up Eclipse to find out the latest news concerning the U320 disk system. Discharged: see Hardware below. ACTION: ALL to read and comment on the SPIE contribution paper distributed by NCH, and to think how this may be transmogrified into a write-up for a refereed astronomy journal like MNRAS. Discharged: NCH has successfully submitted the SPIE paper. The team discussed the viability of a refereed paper containing no real science data, and came to the conclusion that this would not really fly. Ultimately, a paper will be written describing the archive and giving useage examples with real data, but in the meantime the team is content to report progress in conference proceedings (e.g. ADASS and SPIE). Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: MAR to look at Java code documenting/summarising facilities and to implement useage of the same in science archive java application code within the CVS. CONTINUES: JavaDoc will be used. 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: 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 carried forward from 21/05/04 meeting: ----------------------------------------------- None this week. Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: IAB informed the team that his last day on site is likely to be June 30th +/- one day. Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes: No new minutes as of today. Networking: Nothing new this week. Hardware: NCH reported that Eclipse have updated him on the reconfigured catalogue server "amenhotep". This will now be returned to the site in the second half of next week (2-4th June), with 30 disks attached via one dual-channel MegaRAID hardware U320 to PCI-X interface card. This system has been soak-tested at Eclipse and is stable at U320 speed; initial memspeed results indicate read speed that compares favourably to our existing configuration on ahmose. The system will be benchmarked with real database tests when it arrives to verify the IO performance. Assuming no problems, amenhotep will then be reintegrated into the archive network; ahmose will then be similarly reconfigured and finally JBOD expansion of both will be tackled to provide spare capacity on the public server in advance of WFCAM catalogue publication. Quotes have been received from Eclipse concerning further storage expansion; issues concerning rack-mount chassis housing and cabling are being looked at. Note that Eclipse have offered to exchange the original Adaptec controller cards for LSI Logic MegaRAID cards (presumably 3 for 1) free-of-charge. Software: IAB reported: "Made a few structural changes to the CSV generation code. Subdirectories were created to hold all class implementations for the DataBuilder and DataMethod design patterns. New methods were added to implement the calculation of galactic coordinates and Sloan coordinates." NCH reported that he, IAB and ETWS had meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss a plan of action and to-do list for IAB's remaining time. The plan consists of ETWS "shadowing" IAB over June, and for a period of consolidation and documentation of all code that IAB has been involved in as follows (in priority order): 1. Ingest code: to finish by 2/6 extreme programming session (IAB & ETWS) on 3/6 pm 2. Python Data Factory utilities: consolidate and Epydoc document by 4/6 3. Source merging utilities: final design session (NCH & IAB) 3/6 am coding to finish by 18/6 extreme programming session (IAB & NCH) 28-29/6 4. JPG library image compression: consolidate & document 21-23/6 5. XML-RPC utilities and integration of CASU toolkit: consolidation and document 24-25/6 NCH has finally returned to coding after a 2-week hiatus because of the need to prepare for meetings for VDUC, UKIDSS and the UKIRT Board and to write the WSA SPIE contribution. Working again on implementation of source merging (CU7): refactored existing code in the light of refactoring of the Data Factory implementation, and coding up the rest of the design. SSA: Nothing new this week; quick usage update: SSA has 503 logged queries, PSSA has 349. Astrogrid deployment: JDT advised that deployment is awaiting return of the relevant team from overseas and completion of Iteration 5 (which is anticipated within the next few days). Miscellaneous: Nothing else this week.