CERN Accelerating science

Abstract

History and news from the SDT service.

History and stories...

Arash Khodabandeh started this "service" with 2 tools: StP and Artefix. RD13 used Artefix, a tool based on Petri nets that generates software code. It was the first time a generated code was running for the test beam, and it worked! The first purpose of this service was to give access and promote some commercial software engineering tools. They could be tested for own benefits as the tools were paid centrally by Gottfried Kellner, who was working for the ECP division. 50 different tools have been put in production or evaluated during nine years.

As SDT was not defined as a service, there were no servers, no disks and no resources allocated to it. So the tools were installed on the Sun group server: ptsun00, on individual disks, which were too small time to time. At each upgrade the tools were moved to new disks but the "service" increased its success, and the first organization became insufficient. Then came the Sun Sparc 20 Server, pttools, with the possibility to add disks easily.

An annecdotic story at that time, is problem we had with power supply, because the power switch was near the light button and either some house-cleaners or others didn't take attention, or just wanted to test this funny buttons. This was not so "annecdotic" for our users, and, after some catastrophic recovers, we finally get our UPS (Unit of Power Supply) to secure the machine.

One other day, a system warning fell in the mailbox saying some files were missing. As the operator was going through the file system, files were disappearing at the same time. The decision was taken to save all the 30 Giga bytes. It was certainly the best solution because after the backup, all the files disappeared. We reconfigured the file system with a mirror and now when a disk crashes it is transparent to the users.

Today...

You can find the complete information on what we have and how to use it at URL:
http://sdt.cern.ch/
and you can contact us at e-mail address: Sdt.Support@cern.ch

Last news

• Docsys: Johan Karlsson replaces Mario Ruggier and takes care of docsys. The Web site stays in http://cern.ch/docsys/, and you can contact him with the usual mail address docsys.support@cern.ch. His office is 513,1-005 and phone number 79342.
• FrameMaker 5.5.6 on Linux: The script to start FM on your Linux machine but running on a Solaris server is now available. Read the FrameMaker Linux page.
• FrameMaker 6.0 for Nice 2000: is available. Each user needs to contact us to be added in the accessible group.
• Rose 2001 on Solaris and MSWindows: is available. It will not be installed anymore for IBM/AIX, HP/HPUX and Compaq/Tru64. Rose is NOT available for PC/Linux.
• Look!: which is not used anymore is now out of production.

Catalogue of present tools

Analysis and Design

• Rose : OMT/Booch/UML analysis and design tool with C++/Java/Ada code generation.
• StP : OMT/Booch/UML analysis and design with C++ code generation.

• SNiFF+ : Integrated development environment for C, C++, Java, Fortran and CORBA IDL

• X-Designer : Interactive X-platform GUI builder with OSF/Motif toolkit widgets, C, JAVA and Windows code generation.

• Logiscope Tool Kit : Source code analyser and test coverage for C/C++/Fortran.
• Insure++ : Comprehensive tool for error detection in C/C++ programs.
• CodeWizard : Coding standards enforcement tool that prevents errors and standardize C/C++ code.

• FrameMaker : Complete and integrated publishing tool.
• IXgen : Indexing and marker management tools for FrameMaker.
• SoDA : Software Documentation Automation.
• VisualThought : Multipurpose drawing, diagramming and flowcharting tool.
• SDLT (API product): Software Documentation Layout Templates, for FrameMaker.
• TDR (API product): Technical Design Report, for FrameMaker.
• UGT (API product): User Guide Templates, for FrameMaker.