CERN School of Computing 1997

Scientific programme

The School is based on the presentation of approximately 40 lectures and on related practical work on PCs or workstations.

Information Systems

The objective of this track is to address the new area of information systems - which encompasses technologies and applications for exchanging, sharing, accessing digitised information - and to present the state of the art, and prospects for its application to physics experiments. The first week will introduce background material to information technology (including an introduction to hypermedia, Web and Java basics, server gateways, Java clients or Web database applications, caching technologies) and will address in more detail specific advanced technologies (Relational, Active, Federated databases, large scale information management and digital libraries). The second week will be devoted to Advanced Information systems for physicists. The process of particle physics research may be viewed as involving four components: the physicists, the experimental data they analyse, the technical data that describe the experiments, and the documents and papers they produce as an outcome of their research. In the past, the computer-mediated interactions between these four components were supported by disjoint tools. Today, modern information technology permits to envision an integrated approach. The lectures in this second week will present this concept, will provide a road-map of information systems, and will describe what has been already realised at CERN in this field (including WIRED, CEDAR, LIGHT), what is being developed, and will put these efforts in perspective with outside developments.

P. Binko, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
OO Databases

W. Hall, Southampton University
Making Links in Unstructured Data: an Introduction to Hypermedia

W. Hall, Southampton University
Making Links in Web Database Applications

S. Malaika, IBM
Making Links in Structured Data: an Introduction to Databases

S. Malaika, IBM
Making Links in Web Database Applications

M. Donszelmann, B. Rousseau, CERN
Information Systems for Physics Experiments - with exercises

Real-Time Instrumentation

A set of lectures on Network-based Remote Instrument and Experiment Control will cover some of the basic computing technology and current issues for using the Internet for collaborative remote instrument and experiment control. A set of related case studies reflecting experience in this area will be part of the presentation.

Simulations are a widespread method to understand and to design complex systems. They are applied where the complexity of a system inhibits a closed-form description or where the cost of experiments or of prototypes inhibits measurements. Simulations are based on an abstract model of a real system described in terms of objects and their behaviour. In discrete-event simulations the object's behaviour is expressed in terms of state changes which can occur only at discrete events in time. This method is very suitable for computers and a wide variety of programming languages for this purpose are available. As an example of such a language, MODSIM II, will be described in some detail. The design of data acquisition systems for future experiments in high energy physics will be given as an example of an application of discrete-event simulations.

Trigger design and trigger architectures will be discussed in the context of the LHC experiments. These lectures will present a "top-down" analysis of the LHC trigger requirements and design, based on the physics requirements of the LHC experiments. The LHC Level-1 trigger algorithms, based on specific trigger hardware, will be described and compared. Higher-level trigger algorithms, based on commercial switching networks and processor farms, will be presented, as well as the expected algorithm execution times. Full trigger menus and expected trigger rates will also be presented. Trigger architectures and implementations under consideration for the LHC experiments will be compared, first using very simple "paper models", then using complete modelling based on fully simulated events.

W.E. Johnston, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Network-based Remote Instrument and Experiment Control

R. Spiwoks, CERN
Discrete-Event Simulations

D. Hubbard, CEA Saclay
LHC Trigger Design

Software Production

S. Smith, Southampton University
Modern Object-Oriented Software Development - with exercises

A. Khodabandeh, CERN
Software Process and Quality (Organisational aspects)- with exercises

V. Chaloupka, Washington University
Human Aspects of Computing in Large Physics Collaborations

T. Burnett, Washington University
Application of the STL to Reconstruction of High-energy Physics Data - with exercises

J. Allison, Manchester University
GEANT4 Experience

Visualisation

The ability to display physics events and analysis data has long played an important role in the evaluation of data from high-energy physics experiments. The scale of modern experiments and the power of modern computers and software make this an even more critical aspect of physics data analysis. This track will give an overview of the latest techniques available, and how they are applied in practice.

W.T. Hewitt, Manchester University
Visualisation of Multidimensional and Multivariate Data

W.T. Hewitt, Manchester University
Systems and Architectures for Visualisation

L. Taylor, Northeastern University
Visualisation in High Energy Physics

M.Ruggier, J.Turner - Last update: 3 JUN 1997