Subj:	organisation of BRAHMS software

Dear Collaborator

      Enclosed are some thoughts on the tasks and how we might manage the
software development for BRAHMS. At the collaboration some interest was
expressed in forming a software group which would look at the issues in detail.
As a first step the group and interests should be identified. At the meeting
the following expressed an initial interest namely
Kris Hagel  TAM, Ziping Chen BNL, a NBI person
I will be willing to start up the process , but not to lead the software effort 
as we progres.
It would be useful to have a group with about 6 people who should take an early
look and come with recommendations to the collaboration. Should you be 
interested please send an e-mail to me indicating so and possible issue(s) 
you would like to look at in preparation for a workshop the coming summer.

regards
      Flemming



Software Group for BRAHMS

We want to establish a group of BRAHMS collaborators who are interested 
and willing to investigate various aspects of the software for the experiment 
and make a recommendation to the collaboration as a whole. The group will 
also be responsible for designating the person(s) responsible for overseeing 
the development and planning  of the analysis. Among the issues to be 
looked at are the following of which many were mentioned at the 
collaboration meeting on January 11 and 12.

The objet is to create the following suite of programs for preparing the 
experiment, for monitoring and analyze data.

Off-line programs.

Tracking & PID code.
Acceptance and cross section code
Detector Calibration and geometry constants programs
Event displays.

Simulation programs.

Geant description of BRAHMS experiment.
Detector response digitization package.
Event generator programs.

Monitoring Tools.
Event pools. 
Detector monitoring.
Slow control of detectors, HV,...

The group shall investigate different tools and packages which will make 
writing, debugging, checking and efficient. There should be an emphasis on 
selected tools which will be supported by other major groups , e.g. by 
CERN,  or by a major RHIC experiment.




Tools

Analysis shell and libraries
	( ADAMO, DSPACK, ROOT,...)
Data structures dynamically accessible
languages and standards to be followed
	(F77,F90, C, C++,..)
Code management and development tools (CVS, AFS systems,...
Database structures and access (ORACLE at RHIC)
Documentation
Supported platforms
Graphical interfaces


The plan for looking at this is to have a workshop at BNL? during early 
summer looking in details at these issues. Individual group members will be 
given the task to look at a few subjects before the meeting i.e. finding out 
existing tools, tools which will be available on a short time scale. The tools 
should be compared.

time scale

February:
	form group and delegate task to look at. 
March-May
	Collect information on tools, prepare notes.
June/July
	Software workshop (BNL)
	Presentation of findings. make recommendation to collaboration.
Fall 96
	Start coding of prototype applications