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McCauley, T.

Publications and source records attributed to McCauley, T..

Open access to high-level data and analysis tools in the CMS experiment at the LHC

The CMS experiment, in recognition of its commitment to data preservation and open access as well as to education and outreach, has made its first public release of high-level data under the CC0 waiver: up to half of the proton-proton collision data (by volume) at 7 TeV from 2010 in CMS Analysis Object Data format. CMS has prepared, in collaboration with CERN and the other LHC experiments, an open-data web portal based on Invenio. The portal provides access to CMS public data as well as to analysis tools and documentation for the public. The tools include an event display and histogram application that run in the browser. In addition a virtual machine containing a CMS software environment along with XRootD access to the data is available. Within the virtual machine the public can analyse CMS data, example code is provided. As a result, we describe the accompanying tools and documentation and discuss the first experiences of data use.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

iSpy: A powerful and lightweight event display

iSpy is a general-purpose event data and detector visualization program that was developed as an event display for the CMS experiment at the LHC and has seen use by the general public and teachers and students in the context of education and outreach. Central to the iSpy design philosophy is ease of installation, use, and extensibility. The application itself uses the open-access packages Qt4 and Open Inventor and is distributed either as a fully-bound executable or a standard installer package: one can simply download and double-click to begin. Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows are supported. iSpy renders the standard 2D, 3D, and tabular views, and the architecture allows for a generic approach to production of new views and projections. iSpy reads and displays data in the ig format: event information is written in compressed JSON format files designed for distribution over a network. This format is easily extensible and makes the iSpy client indifferent to the original input data source. The ig format is the one used for release of approved CMS data to the public.

Alverson, G.↗

A browser-based event display for the CMS experiment at the LHC

The line between native and web applications is becoming increasingly blurred as modern web browsers are becoming powerful platforms on which applications can be run. Such applications are trivial to install and are readily extensible and easy to use. In an educational setting, web applications permit a way to deploy deploy tools in a highly-restrictive computing environment. The I2U2 collaboration has developed a browser-based event display for viewing events in data collected and released to the public by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The application itself reads a JSON event format and uses the JavaScript 3D rendering engine pre3d. The only requirement is a modern browser using HTML5 canvas. The event display has been used by thousands of high school students in the context of programs organized by I2U2, QuarkNet, and IPPOG. This browser-based approach to display of events can have broader usage and impact for experts and public alike.

Hategan, M.↗

Multiple-view, multiple-selection visualization of simulation geometry in CMS

Fireworks, the event-display program of CMS, was extended with an advanced geometry visualization package. ROOT's TGeo geometry is used as internal representation, shared among several geometry views. Each view is represented by a GUI list-tree widget, implemented as a flat vector to allow for fast searching, selection, and filtering by material type, node name, and shape type. Display of logical and physical volumes is supported. Color, transparency, and visibility flags can be modified for each node or for a selection of nodes. Further operations, like opening of a new view or changing of the root node, can be performed via a context menu. Node selection and graphical properties determined by the list-tree view can be visualized in any 3D graphics view of Fireworks. As each 3D view can display any number of geometry views, a user is free to combine different geometry-view selections within the same 3D view. Node-selection by proximity to a given point is possible. A visual clipping box can be set for each geometry view to limit geometry drawing into a specified region. Visualization of geometric overlaps, as detected by TGeo, is also supported. The geometry visualization package is used for detailed inspection and display of simulation geometry with or without the event data. It also serves as a tool for geometry debugging and inspection, facilitating development of geometries for CMS detector upgrades and for SLHC.

Bauerdick, L. A.T.↗