Comments (May 2001) to Nov 2000 PCAP comments and recommendations:

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== Hire two persons for database development. Increase the presence of
== U.S. developers at CERN.
===========================================================================

Database hires at ANL completed by mid January.

Early this year we submitted an NSF proposal to support three software
developers at CERN. We have received no word on its approval. We continue
to support one software professional at CERN from existing funds.

In prioritizing any new funds, first priority will be given to
sustaining the core development and software support plan at ANL, BNL
and LBNL before funds are allocated to increasing CERN presence.

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== We encourage the reassessment of the data management strategy in
== collaboration with other experiments.
===========================================================================

This reassessment is in the works. US ATLAS is involved at the LHC
level (the working group being planned); the US LHC level (US LHC
common project plans include collaborative work in evaluating 
alternative database technologies, in particular relational and
object relational); and within ATLAS where the US is/will be 
active in assessing Objectivity, ROOT I/O and relational DB tools (at
least).

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== Get International ATLAS to take a formal decision on Athena
===========================================================================

International ATLAS has greatly dragged out this decision process, with
the final meeting of the review committee taking place in March. No
report has yet been released. Preliminary reports and collaboration
sentiment leave no doubt that Athena will be accepted as the ATLAS
framework.

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== The quality control group should be strengthened with priority given
== to applying quality control procedures to the framework
===========================================================================

Quality control activity was strengthened shortly after the review
when US ATLAS volunteered our BNL based software professional
developer to participate in priority QA tasks. He led the editing and
release of the official ATLAS C++ coding standards in January.  He
also did preliminary work on enabling the CodeWizard software
validation tool in the ATLAS code management system; CodeWizard will
test ATLAS software for compliance with the established standards. He
has however recently left the group and is now being replaced.

The other important new quality assurance activity has been in
improving software test and validation tools, with a particular
motivation being their application in framework development; the Chief
Architect has been closely involved in the design and early
application of the tools.  We have developed a facility which produces
nightly builds of the full ATLAS software based on the most recent
tagged versions of packages. It provides immediate email feedback to
developers on newly introduced software bugs and
incompatibilities. This system addresses current ATLAS difficulties in
assembling functional software releases in a timely way by providing
quantitative feedback on current software quality continuously, so the
convergence of the software base toward a releasable body of code can
be tracked. Any given nightly can be isolated, preserved and used to
define a release, so that a high quality build can be preserved and
deployed to general users and developers. We anticipate extending the
system's assessments of software quality beyond simple 'did it build'
criteria to incorporate more substantive metrics provided by eg. unit
tests.  This facility was implemented at BNL with substantial input to
the design and functionality from LBNL.

===========================================================================
== Negotiate with DOE and NSF the required funding profile for
== software development
===========================================================================

Boy, how we try!

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== Complete and debug the WBS. Unify the ATLAS PBS with the U.S. ATLAS
== WBS as soon as possible. Some areas need to be developed in more
== detail.
===========================================================================

The software WBS is substantially complete. Relatively minor revisions
and additions will continue as International ATLAS proceeds to
integrate our WBS into an International ATLAS one, while we continue
to aim for as much commonality as possible.

From the U.S. side, the integration of our WBS with the ATLAS PBS is
complete. XProject now supports projections from common sources of
both the U.S. WBS and ATLAS PBS. XProject is now in use by International
ATLAS to incorporate the greater detail of the U.S. WBS into the ATLAS
PBS.