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MANAGEMENT OF EQUIPMENT DATABASES AT CERN FOR
THE ATLAS EXPERIMENT*
KAIO KARAM GALVÃO
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
KATHY POMMÈS, JORGE MOLINA-PÉREZ
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
CARMEN MAIDANTCHIK, FELIPE FINK GRAEL
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The ATLAS experiment is about to finish its installation phase, entering into operation
on the summer of 2008. This installation has represented an enormous challenge in terms
of developing, setting up, and administrating the Equipment Databases, due to the large
complexity of the detector, its associated services, and the necessary infrastructure. All
major equipment is registered prior to installation including its electronic description and
interconnectivity. This information is stored in Oracle databases. 3D visualization tools,
user interfaces for portable devices, and generic retrieval/updating mechanisms have
been developed in order to carry out the management of the sub-detectors databases. The
full traceability of all installed equipment is crucial from ATLAS organizational point of
view, and it is also a requirement by the French authorities to fulfill the INB (Installation
Nucléaire de Base) protocol.
1. Introduction
ATLAS is one of the four experiments under construction to be operated with
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN [1]. The detector consists of four
major subsystems: inner tracker, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters,
muon spectrometer and magnet system [2]. The outer dimensions of the barrel-
shaped detector are 46 m in length and 22 m in diameter [3], and it is located
100 m underground. More than 93000 items compose the overall detector, which
are manufactured all over the world by research institutes and the industry. The
ATLAS Technical Coordination is responsible for the final installation at CERN.
*
This work is run by the ATLAS Technical Coordination.
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The main activities of this process are: assure that the sub-detector and off-
detector electronics objects are assembled in the correct positions; implement
and maintain the connection between the front end and back end electronics;
realize survey measurements to monitor the sub-detector parts displacements
from their nominal positions.
During the production and installation phases, each sub-system stores large
amounts of data under different modeling schemes. Individual database solutions
are implemented with distinct storage technologies. The successful installation of
the experiment depends critically on organizing the equipment information. This
involves sharing data in an easy and transparent way, as well as integrating
related information located in multiple repositories.
2. Equipment databases management
Databases are established to register and maintain equipment information. Figure
1 shows the general concept employed in the databases definition. Every
physical object going to the underground area is called equipment. A functional
position represents a function to be fulfilled by an equipment [4]. The following
rules apply: only functional positions are cabled; functional positions are not
moved; equipments can be moved; history is kept for both equipments and
functional positions.
Figure 1. Equipment management general concept.
The Technical Coordination and subsystems leaders are responsible for
filling in the information into the databases for every unit they plan to install and
its associated functional position. The Web is the common access platform for
this data. Access through handheld devices is also provided. Next, the
equipment databases are described, together with the software tools managed by
Technical Coordination to interact with the information.
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2.1. Manufacturing and test folder
All equipment installed in ATLAS, up to the board level, is labeled and entered
into an Oracle database through the Manufacturing and test folder (MTF). The
MTF application [5] is used in ATLAS for equipment inventory. MTF underlies
on D7i, a commercial database from Datastream [6] used for maintenance
management and asset tracking. Within MTF, each item has a unique ID
corresponding to its serial number, which is referenced in the Functional
Positions database.
2.2. Rack Wizard
The Rack Wizard [7] is a Java tool, firstly developed for the CMS experiment at
CERN, used to manage the substantial amount of electronics used in the ATLAS
experiment. It offers a graphical view of the off-detector electronics layout in a
drag and drop style. It stores in an Oracle database the electronics configuration
and location of each functional position. The interconnectivity between the back
end and the front end objects is done through access to the cable database.
2.3. AtlasEditor3D
The AtlasEditor3D [8] is a graphical software tool, implemented in Java3D, used
in the management of equipment geometry and positioning. It allows the
synthesis of the ATLAS detector starting from 3D shapes, such as boxes, tubes,
cones, and trapezoids. This tool supports the sub-detector objects registered in
the database, together with their geometrical properties and nominal positions. It
is integrated into Rack Wizard.
2.4. Cable Database
The Cable Database contains data on interconnectivity between the back-end
racks and the sub-detector objects. It stores on Oracle information to support the
cable installation team (e.g. purpose, physical characteristics, routing, start-point,
endpoint, and status of each cable). The Cable Interface [9] runs also on
handheld devices, allowing users to update the Cable Database while working in
the ATLAS underground area.
2.5. Survey Database
A large amount of survey data is being accumulated during sub-detectors
integration and installation. This survey data is stored into an Oracle database to
monitor existing displacements of the sub-detectors objects from their nominal
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positions in the ATLAS Interaction Point reference system. This information is
displayed through the Java3D tool AtlasSurvey3D [10], which shows a 3D
visualization of the sub-detectors and axis deviations.
2.6. The Glance Project
The Glance [11] interacts to all the equipment data stored in Oracle databases.
This system manages interface descriptions stored using the XML markup
language. It provides data retrieval and insertion/update engines on distinct and
geographically spread repositories. The system connects to several storage
technologies, such as Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Glance
automatically recognizes and displays to the user the internal structure of the
databases. It allows the creation of customized Search Interfaces (SI) and
Insertion Interfaces (II), without the necessity of previously knowing the data
modeling of each data set. Each interface can integrate information sets coming
from multiple data sources. Retrieved information can be delivered to the
requester in different formats, such as HTML, XML and CSV. Glance has a user
Web interface and can also be accessed by other software applications.
3. Results
The MTF database stores records from more than 93000 equipment parts located
in the experimental cavern. This data is accessed via 10 Search Interfaces
created with the Glance system. About 4000 items were inserted in this database
in the last 6 months, with the support of 10 Glance Insertion Interfaces.
The Functional Positions database contains data on 670 racks, 15000
crates/boards, 13000 sensors, and others. This information is managed by the
Rack Wizard and also retrieved by 17 Glance Search Interfaces. The Cable
database holds information regarding 55600 cables. The Glance system exports
all the cable data in an interval of time of less than 30 seconds.
People from the 164 institutes in more than 35 countries participating in the
ATLAS collaboration [2] interact with all this data in a transparent way using the
software tools previously described.
4. Conclusions and future work
The ATLAS detector, as soon as it enters into operation, must satisfy the French
government requirements for the INB (Installation Nucléaire de Base) protocol.
That means guaranteeing the traceability and history of all the equipment
exposed to radiation. Therefore, some data will be required on a long-term basis
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to track the movement of equipment in and out of the experimental cavern
throughout the life of ATLAS.
Besides fulfilling the INB requirements, the Equipment Databases are used
by the Technical coordination and sub-detectors groups during the integration
and installation phases of the experiment, and will in many cases be used to
initialize other databases, e.g. the online configuration and conditions databases.
The off-detector systems, such as trigger and data acquisition systems, rely
on the cabling information. Cabling updates are entered into the database using a
barcode reader, and this data will then be exported to the online
configuration/conditions databases, allowing channel mapping information to be
automatically updated in the online and offline software. This facility is
particularly important during the commissioning phase, when many re-cabling
operations are expected.
Analyses and calculations are performed on the acquired data relatively to
the ATLAS Interaction Point reference system. The Survey data is used to verify
that such displacements will not affect the experiment results.
References
1. A. Salzburger, “TRACK EXTRAPOLATION WITH INTRINSIC
NAVIGATION IN THE NEW ATLAS TRACKING SCHEME”, Paper
presented at 9th ICATPP Conf. 2005, Como, Italy.
2. The ATLAS Experiment, http://atlas.ch/
3. H.J. Burckhart and B. Hallgren, “Front-end I/O of the ATLAS Detector
Control System”, Paper presented at ICALEPCS’99, Trieste, Italy.
4. K.Pommès, M. Sharpp, F.Dittus, J-C. Guillaume, “Equipment Registration
Conventions”
https://edms.cern.ch/cedar/plsql/doc.info?document_id=345996&version=1.
5. C. Delamare, A. Jimeno, S. Mallón Amérigo, E. Manola-Poggioli, P.
Martel, B. Rousseau, D. Widegren, “MANUFACTURING AND TEST
FOLDER: MTF”, Proceedings of EPAC 2002, Paris.
6. Enterprise Asset Management Software, http://www.datastream.net/
7. F. Glege, “The Rack Wizard - a graphical database interface for electronics
configuration”, Paper presented at LECC 2003, Amsterdam.
8. K. Pommès, J. Molina-Pérez, AtlasEditor3D; http://cern.ch/AtlasEditor3D/
9. F. Glege, K. Pommès, J. Molina-Pérez, Cable Interface,
https://oraweb.cern.ch/pls/atlasintegration/EMT_main.main_menu
10. K. Pommès, J. Molina-Pérez, AtlasSurvey3D, http://cern.ch/AtlasSurvey3D/
11. C. Maidantchik, F. F. Grael, K. K. Galvão, K. Pommès, “Glance Project: a
database retrieval mechanism for the ATLAS detector”, Proceedings of
CHEP 2007, Victoria BC, Canada.
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