From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri Mar 11 18:32:01 2005 Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:37:41 +0000 (GMT) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius , Mike Read , Nigel Hambly , Nicholas Cross , Bob Mann Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Andrew Lawrence , Andy Adamson , John Taylor , Jim Emerson , Malcolm Stewart , Martin Hill , Mike Irwin , Peredur Williams , Stephen Warren Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes: 11th March 2005 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 11th March 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Present: NCH, PMW, ETWS, NJC, MAR, JMS, RGM Apologies: MCH, JPE, JDT, AL DONM: NOTE: 10am, Friday 1st April (no, really) 2005, plate library Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: NCH & ETWS to take a look at the latest raw MEF headers and send any comments back to MR at CASU. Discharged: comments and questions sent by email to MR and CCd to MJI, JRL and JAC folks. Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: MAR & NCH to check out SQL Server networked server functionality for cross-server querying. Continues; NCH suggested we should do some experiments with the linked SQL Servers ahmose & amenhotep once the dust has settled on their reorganisation over the next couple of weeks. Continues: RGM noted that JHU have been doing some experiments with individual DBs distributed across several instances of SQL Server. - all continuing; thanks for progressing these. Actions carried forward from 4/03/05 meeting: ---------------------------------------------- None this week. Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: NCH noted the VDMT meeting after the last meeting at this week's meeting. The meat of this meeting (that's the VDMT meeting, not the WSA weekly meeting) consisted of discussions concerning a UK VDFS review meeting. There was a meeting of minds concerning that meeting (that's the UK review meeting, not the VDMT meeting), viz. that it will now take place in mid-September with a consequent document release date of mid-August. NCH reiterated that the design documentation will need updating well before this anyway. JMS has circulated a top-level VDFS project plan; PMW suggested a few alterations. NCH suggested that it would be perhaps a good idea to put this plan up on the VDFS web site, and provide a link from our own site which contains some out-of-date GANTTs (these should be removed). Finally, NCH reported that due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the new software developer who was due to arrive next week has had to withdraw his acceptance of our job offer, and will not be coming to work for us. This leaves us in a somewhat awkward position, as his previous wish to defer his start date has resulted in 6 months passing since the shortlisting, interview & initial offer. NCH, PMW and RGM will meet (an extraordinary meeting, if you will, to follow immediately after this meeting) to resolve this unfortunate situation asap. WFCAM update: Nothing new this week. Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes: The team noted the minutes of the meeting of 9th March. The only comment concerned the writing of "blank" placeholder TFORMs in fits binary tables; a substantive email reply concerning the first batch of 80-parameter catalogue data provided by CASU will be sent to JRL immediately. Networking: After a lot of jiggery-pokery, 80-parameter fits binary tables have been successfully ingested into the WSA by ETWS. Several issues have arisen and NCH will report back to CASU. ACTION: NCH to report back to CASU on issues raised by the current batch of 80-paramater fits binary tables. Hardware: Online archive hardware continues to function normally. RGM noted that he has emailed Arthur Trew to set up a meeting (this meeting will be an ad-hoc, one-off meeting) concerning the status of the School's SAN and the possibility of setting up some experiments on high-end DB solutions with DB2 using the SAN as the back-end storage. Software: NJC reported substantial work on global photometric recalibration. Top-level design and a more detailed analysis of software modules has been done. A draft document will be prepared to track these developments. NCH and NJC have looked over the design so far, and identified gaps in the archive relational model that need to be filled to service global photometric recalibration. NCH has additionally been working closely with ETWS on final shake-down of the ingest of commissioning data, and testing CU7 (source merging) using those data. ETWS has completed the testing of CUs 1-4, and will now resume development of 5, 13 & 14. MAR has continued to work on interface applications, including thumbnail image extraction, and source catalogue query builders for surveys based on commissioning data. SSA: No news this week. Astrogrid deployment: MAR noted next Monday's GAG AG deployment telecon. JDT returns next week. Miscellaneous: Nothing else this week; and no further meetings to report on or to be organised.