Development Status

Current version

The current version browses data seen by the ATLASINTEGRATION_READER account on the pdb01 database cluster. The system is currently under development. At the moment you can browse a list of predefined search interfaces or create your own interface. The second option will guide you into 5 steps:

Select Schema - The available schemas from the database are listed for the user to choose.
Select Table - The available tables from the selected schema are listed.
Edit XML - The system automatically generates a XML description for a search interface based on the selected table, and prompts the user for any change.
Search - Based on the XML description of the last step, the system displays the search interface.
Browse Results - The results for the search are displayed on-line.

Click here to enter the current version of the Glance Project.

Recently Implemented Features

Here is a list of the recently implemented features, the latest feature first.

Multiple Search Parameters Support
Enumeration Support
Session Management
List of existing Search Interfaces
User Authentication trough CERN NICE credentials. When the NICE authentication has been previously done in the same browser, the system automatically recognizes.

At the same time these fixes and evolutive changes happened:

Improved CLOB handling
Reading PDB01

New Functions Under Development

The following functionalities are at the moment under development in Glance.

Search Interfaces classification and management

Search Interfaces separation into categories, edition/saving/exclusion of SIs, categorization attributes and creation of new categories: https://atglance.web.cern.ch/atglance/cgi-bin/cimar/listCategory

Searching for Search Interfaces

Search for SIs using their attributes and the TOP 5 Search Interfaces: http://atglance.web.cern.ch/atglance/cgi-bin/cimar/showInterface?SIID=1090

Insert Interface for equipments in the MTF system: Glance-INSERTION

First version: http://atglance.web.cern.ch/atglance/glance-update.html

User Authentication

Authentication trough CERN NICE credentials. When the NICE authentication has been previously done in the browser, the system automatically recognizes.

The authentication must be required at the time of the creation of a Search Interface.
Not requiring authentication when accessing SI's may lead to the problem of having too many accesses to the database.

Glance-INTEGRATION

The Glance Project was initally developed to access Oracle databases. It is implemented with the C++ programming language and runs on Linux operating system with the Apache HTTP server, and now the access to different database technologies is being added to the system. The first example is developed for the TileCal Commissioning, accessing the technologies MySQL and MS-SQL Server. This example will allow to identify requirements and to analyze potencial problems and risks (for instance, the risk to maintain 2 versions of the system in diferent platforms).

Example of a system that retrieves (using parameters and authentication) data/tables from databases with different technologies: http://felipefg.web.cern.ch/felipefg/cgi-bin/odbc.
Example to integrate information from different databases: http://arzv5.web.cern.ch/arzv5/tilecal/drawerDB.php. These informations were copied to an Oracle database, since the technology and modeling from the original database was unknown.
Search Interface "Search for Module Number and TileCal ROD": http://atglance.web.cern.ch/atglance/cgi-bin/showInterface?SIID=170.
Location example: integrates the ATLAS_INTEGRATION and the MTF databases, avoiding data duplication. Accesses data from different databases, although with the same technology, and shows information in an integrated way.
Link: http://atglance.web.cern.ch/atglance/SearchEquipment/index.html?partID=20HSCERAA10002.
Some points to consider about this topic:
- There is no where to store data about equipment which is not inside the pit.
- From Glance, it is possible to access MTF. But the opposite is not true. So, if the location information will be stored ONLY in ATLAS_INTEGRATION, to users accessing equipment data in MTF it should be possible to retrive the Location information, what can be done through Glance.

Next steps

This is the list of next step, more or less in priority order.

Add/Remove/Edit Search Interfaces
Use XSLT for formatting output
SearchInterface integrity check
Automatically recognise relationship among tables
Automatically generate Search Interface for all tables
User Management
User friendly tool for generating Search Interfaces

Also, the following fixes and evolutive changes are planned:

Improved C++ exception handling
Interface style and usability improvements

Previous Version

The first version of the project, named the Cable Project, is hosted at LPS (Signal processing Laboratory, UFRJ, Brazil) and was implemented using Java and JSP (Java Server Pages) and interacts with the CERN Oracle Database. Take a look at the Technology Preview 1.