From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri Aug 6 12:11:03 2004 Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 12:07:08 +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, 6th August 2004 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 6th August 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Present: NCH, MAR, PMW, ETWS, JDT, RGM, GPS, SCK Apologies: JPE, HMG, JMS, AL, MCH DONM: 10am, Friday 13th August, plate library Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: PMW to organise shortlisting for the two new recruitments. Discharged; longlisting by RGM, NCH & PMW first (this is taking place at the moment) followed by shortlisting using more input. ACTION: NCH & ETWS to retest the ingest codes in the light of recent schema evolution Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: PMW to apply a little presure to the premises team to solve the continuing problem of heat overload in C1. Some discussions with the IT Support team; action continues 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 30/07/04 meeting: ----------------------------------------------- ACTION: NCH & ETWS to meet on Tues PM to discuss the next pieces of work to be done. CONTINUES Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: NCH noted the VDMT meeting this afternoon and asked if any team members had issues they would like raised - nobody did. NCH, PMW and RGM are busy longlisting for the new recruitments and shortlisiting should take place next week. Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes: The team noted the CASU meeting minutes of 27 July 2004; there were no matters arising. Networking: NCH noted that a backup of SDSS DR2 has been secured on Ultrium-II tape so those data are ready for deployment on the public catalogue server once sufficient disk space is added. Hardware: NCH noted that there are a few teething problems with the new 4 channel MegaRAID card - investigation is ongoing. The rewired JBOD is ready to test in the system. MAR noted that a new additional disk has been installed on thoth and is now accessible to publishe larg datasets (> 100 GB) when required. Software: MAR reported: "Updated image extraction servlet to work with properties file for setting up of various parameters. (Makes it easier to move over to thoth and configure without having to recompile and/or get Horst to stop/start tomcat. Also added in new class to parse/verify coords and convert to J2000. Looked at converting some of the SLALIB functions to Java as find other available classes confusing, looks starightforward for the few functions I initially would like. Eckhard added to his SQL parsing code so that it generates nice html which I've included in the menu driven SSQ SQL pages (and will use for the WSA). Users can now see full column info for a given table on the same page as the checkboxes (don't have to flip between pages or browser windows). Also should encourage users to make use of indexed attributes." ETWS reported: "I've added an option to the parsing script, which creates long and short checkboxed html lists from the schemas. Also it was refactored to support highlighting of primary keys. On the other hand, I've added case insensitivness of the attributes units column to the extract metadata suite and build in a check for having only numeric values in a processed bigint string. And for easier installation of the WSA code I've written Makefiles which handle the making of the C++ libraries in the different subdirectories of the WSA, steered by a top level Makefile. NCH & ETWS have been unit testing CU3 again and tidying up loose ends. We have had no trouble in maintaining and adding to IAB's excellent C++ ingest codes. Some discussions concerning the schema issues raised by NCH resulted in RGM pointing out that there is no real problem with the relational model of the SSA/WSA detection/source tables - the only problem is in NCH's fundamental lack of understanding of SQL. Users can get retrieve all passband attributes in a single query; the SQL is somewhat convoluted but provided a sensible subset of parameters is propagated into source it will be rarely necessary to use such scripts. GPS pointed out that one additional table may simplify things if it's really felt necessary. ACTION: NCH to review the source/detection schemas one more time and make any necessary changes, and to read "SQL for dummies" (again) SSA: No news (is still good news) this week Astrogrid deployment: MAR noted that MCH has been in touch from Germany to finalise PAL access to the public catalogue server ahmose and all associated datasets in the SSA. Testing of the Astrogrid deployment should be possible quite soon... Miscellaneous: RGM raised the issue of ADASS attendance. Some discussion ensued as to who might attend; no volunteers were forthcoming and NCH refused to insist that any one individual must go when he himself is not prepared to go (having been to the last one, and attended SPIE this year, etc). RGM suggested that it was a wider issue for WFAU in that we should regard ADASS as the premier conference for showcasing WFAU activities, and agreed to take an action to try to identify an individual to fly the WFAU flag (but with an emphasis on the WSA). ACTION: RGM to try to identify an ADASS attendee to present a WFAU/WSA poster by the middle of next week.