From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri May 27 14:07:58 2005
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 11:38:40 +0100 (BST)
From: Nigel Hambly <nch@roe.ac.uk>
To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius <etws@roe.ac.uk>,
Mike Read <mar@roe.ac.uk>, Nigel Hambly <nch@roe.ac.uk>,
Nicholas Cross <njc@roe.ac.uk>, Bob Mann <rgm@roe.ac.uk>
Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Andrew Lawrence
<al@roe.ac.uk>, Andy Adamson <a.adamson@jach.hawaii.edu>,
John Taylor <jdt@roe.ac.uk>, Jim Emerson <j.p.emerson@qmul.ac.uk>,
Malcolm Stewart <jms@roe.ac.uk>, Martin Hill <mch@roe.ac.uk>,
Mike Irwin <mike@ast.cam.ac.uk>, Peredur Williams <pmw@roe.ac.uk>,
Stephen Warren <s.j.warren@ic.ac.uk>
Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes, 27th May 2005
Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 27th May 2005
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Present: NCH, NJC, ETWS, MAR, JMS
Apologies: MCH, AL, RGM, JPE, PMW, JDT
DONM: 10am, Friday 3rd June 2005, plate library
Actions discharged:
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ACTION: MAR to flesh out the "Data Overview" web pages for the WSA.
Discharged
Actions partly discharged but continuing:
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None this week.
Actions carried forward from 20/05/05 meeting:
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None this week.
Specific points and new actions:
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Project management:
NCH & JMS noted the upcoming VDMT telecon on Friday 3rd June at 2pm. PMW
returns from from his cornish holiday on Monday, and will do the usual
report preparation.
WFCAM update:
Survey data being taken apace; see the stop press pages linked from the
TWiki for latest news.
Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes:
No new minutes as of 27/05/05.
Networking:
NCH had a chat with MJI at CASU yesterday; network transfer between
CASU and WFAU is excellent. NCH asked if it might be possible for CASU
to add a couple of FITS keywords to MEFs to streamline some ingest
processes at the archive end; MJI asked for details.
ACTION: ETWS to send MJI the details of new FITS keywords for archive
purposes
Remaining reprocessed phase-I comms data are being transfered up today and
the release is now scheduled for early next week (see below).
Hardware:
All archive hardware are functioning normally.
Software:
ETWS reported:
"CU 1 to 4 have been run successfully on the first 10 nights of pipeline
processed data from CASU after fixing some compiler problems regarding
infinite numbers."
MAR reported:
"Fleshed out the data base overview page (which includes NCH's
section on source merging). ETWS produced a full alphabetic listing of all
attributes held in the WSA and these have been add to the web pages and
linked via the glossary page.
Tested Java JTDS driver on PSSA, seems to give same answers as MS
driver, is about 20 percent quicker and has richer metadata and
functionality. No downside yet so will probably adopt this as the default
driver but make it easy to switch back to old one."
NCH reported some workarounds for scaling problems noted last week; and
also some fixes. Responses from Microsoft and JHU concerning questions
raised have not yielded much new information.
Data Release:
NCH noted that we had missed our self-imposed deadline for releasing the
reprocessed phase-I comms data by yesterday (for the UKIRT Board Meeting)
mainly due to a few remaining ingest hiccups. These have been ironed out,
and the release is now scheduled for early next week.
SSA:
Nothing new this week
Astrogrid deployment:
No news this week.
Miscellaneous:
NCH reported back from the UKIRT Board Meeting, where both he and MJI gave
presentations on WFCAM processing/archiving. The overall impression seemed
to be very positive. Specific points worthy of note:
i) SJW suggested that for novice users not in the UKIDSS club it may be
necessary to provide more hand-holding at the highest level of the web pages.
ACTION: ALL to think about simple modifications to the top-level web site to
help totally novice users get to the data they want.
ii) A few questions came up regarding integration with AstroGrid and the VO,
which were answered reasonably successfully;
iii) In informal discussions, the subject of non-survey PI programmes came up.
We are aware of two PIs (Nial Tanvir and Annette Ferguson) who have
asked about the possibility of using the dataflow system for their private
PI non-survey programmes. NCH noted that the database side is reasonably set
up for this, but that some thought and effort needs to go into the user
interface side; MAR noted some administrative issues also. NCH asked that
we think seriously over the next week about deploying the system and
procedures to enable servicing of requests for archive use by non-survey PIs.