This is a self enclosed wiki page containing the agenda and all the supplied review documentation. It is publicly viewable.
Purpose and Goals of the Meeting
The Technology Review is one of four goals of our Cycle-1 plan for Lasair-LSST development. So far, we have a mature working prototype (Lasair-ZTF); clear science requirements; a high-level technology-free component and flow design; and a long term development plan, broken into six monthly cycles. The next step is to take some key baseline technology decisions, so that we can undertake detailed technical design and development. This meeting is intended therefore as a relatively lightweight, semi-formal preliminary Technical Design Review. The goals are to:
Identify the key technology decisions to make
Review the results of related tests and experiments
Conclude as many key technology choices as possible
Clarify remaining technology choices to be made
Set further tests in order to reach conclusions
Outline a technical design
Place/Date
ROE rooftop gallery. (See information on Visiting IfA)
The meeting is roughly one day spread over two.
Tues March 17th 11:00 -6:00pm
Wed March 18th 9:00am - 1:00pm
An informal pub dinner is planned for Tuesday evening.
Session-1: Introduction and Context
For general context, see papers O1-O6 below
Presentation slides will be uploaded on the day
Chair: George Beckett
11:00 Introduction and goals of meeting (Andy Lawrence)
11:10 Context: Rubin observatory, LSST and LSST:UK (Stephen Smartt)
11:40 Lasair today: what it does, how it works – demo (Roy Williams)[see paper O5 and documentation]
12:10 Sherlock: what it does, how it works (Dave Young) [slide deck]
12:40 Lasair planning process (Andy will add slides)[see paper O2]
13:00 Lunch break
Session-2 Discussion of Key Technology Areas
14:00 Technology overview: what needs to be decided? (Roy Williams) (Paper PDF)
14:20 Key Area-1 : Receiving and Processing the Data Flow (led by Stephen Smartt)
LSST public and private; galaxies, stars and rocks (Stephen Smartt) (Paper PDF)
Lasair ingestion with SSD (Ken Smith) (paper)
Handling light curves (Roy Williams) (Paper PDF)
Parallel ingestion and workflow (Roy Williams) (Paper PDF)
Streaming queries (Gareth Francis)
Making a super Sherlock (Ken Smith) (paper)
15:10 Key Area-2: Databases, Storage, Internal Structure (led by Ken)
MySQL vs Cassandra, query languages (Ken Smith) (paper)
Blob storage requirements and technology (Gareth) (summary)
Tea Break
16:20 Key Area-3: User services - querying, extraction, analysis (led by Roy)
Light curve classification and features (Michael) (paper)
Lasair and the LSST Science Platform (Stelios)
Tues evening: Pub dinner for those who wish
Session-3 Key Technologies review (Stephen)
09:30 Recap of Day-1 discussions
09:50 Debate the key technology decisions
10:30 Conclude as many as possible
11:00 coffee break
Session-4 Conclusions (Andy)
11:20 Review remaining technology decisions
11:50 Set further evaluations needed to conclude these
12:30 Outline Technology Design
13:00 lunch
Key area issues
As we step through the presentations on the Key Areas, we should decide and record the key technology decisions needed, but will actually decide them the next day. Each discussion will have some presentations will be made available on the day, but the technology evaluation reports should be available in advance.
Supplied Paperwork
Some of the material will be verbal/powerpoint, but we will upload PDF versions here as they become available. Pre-supplied written papers will be as above:
Overview documents
(O1) High-level diagram: detailed version and simplified version
(O1b) Technology Challenges
(O2) Lasair-PhaseB plan
(O3) LSST:UK Phase B proposal
(O4) LUSC-A-02 LSST approach to alerts and variables
(O5) LUSC-A-08 The Lasair Broker (i.e. Phase A prototype)
(O6) LUSC-A-09 Initial science requirements for variable science
These are pre-existing written documents and will be uploaded here in advance of meeting.
Key Links
We intend this wiki page, the talks, and the written papers to be all that is necessary to participate in the review. However, for those who wish, and who have wiki access, here are some other key links:
The Lasair ZTF working prototype
Lasair Phase-B wiki page
LSST:UK Phase B planning pages
LSST:UK Science Requirements
Participants Confirmed
Andy Lawrence [ROE]
Roy Williams [ROE]
Mark Holliman [ROE]
Ken Smith [Belfast]
Gareth Francis [EPCC]
Stelios Voutsinas [ROE]
Dave Morris [ROE]
Stephen Smartt [Belfast]
Michael Fulton [Belfast]
Dave Young [Belfast]
Nigel Hambly [ROE]
Teng Li [EPCC]
George Beckett [EPCC]
Terry Sloan [EPCC]
Bob Mann (definitely for 18th, probably for part of 17th) [ROE]
Britton Smith [ROE]
Meg Schwamb [Belfast]
Ally Hume [EPCC]
Cam Allen [Zooniverse]