An on-line Integrated Bookkeeping: electronic run log book and Meta-Data Repository for ATLAS

Abstract

In the context of the ATLAS experiment there is growing evidence of the importance of different kinds of Meta-data including all the important details of the detector and data acquisition that are vital for the analysis of the acquired data. The Online BookKeeper (OBK) is a component of ATLAS online software that stores all information collected while running the experiment, including the Meta-data associated with the event acquisition, triggering and storage. The facilities for acquisition of control data within the on-line software framework, together with a full functional Web interface, make the OBK a powerful tool containing all information needed for event analysis, including an electronic log book. In this paper we explain how OBK plays a role as one of the main collectors and managers of Meta-data produced on-line, and we'll also focus on the Web facilities already available. The usage of the web interface as an electronic run logbook is also explained, together with the future extensions. We describe the technology used in OBK development and how we arrived at the present level explaining the previous experience with various DBMS technologies. The extensive performance evaluations that have been performed and the usage in the production environment of the ATLAS test beams are also analysed.