Minutes from SSS Mtg 2008-Oct-21

Attendees: B.Butler,   M.Claussen,   D.Harland, B.Hesman, F.Owen,
           J.Rochford, L.Sjouwerman, B.Truitt,  S.Witz

General Discussion

Mark mentioned that he ran into a problem with the Source Catalog Tool (SCT). He added a new source, entered its name, moved to another field, and received a java stack trace. Brian noted that the fix should be easy.

Mark ran a Ka-band test on the VLA, making a script by hacking an observe file. His intent had been to compare that to a script generated by the OPT, but was unable to do this due to the above error.

Mark, along with Stephan, attended a PST post mortem. One thing of note was the talk about developing a catalog of sources for use in the PST.

Mark said that, checking the OPT's script generation capability aside, astronomers are ready to do Ka-band testing. Brigette suggested that the OPT be used for this testing.

Lorant suggested that we put the OPT et al on a production server. The programming staff would update the applications on this machine less frequently than they do those on webtest. Bryan seconded that motion, suggesting that we tag the code with a version number and release it to the production server.

Bryan, Lorant, Brian, and Dave will get together to kick off the specification of fly-over help for the OPT.

* * *

Goals: 2008.Q3 & 2008.Q4

Dave reviewed the status of the eight third quarter goals. The details are listed in sssGoals2008Q3_PostMortem.pdf. Of the eight, four were completed, a fifth was completed with respect to programming, but not testing, and progress was made on the other three.

Dave then presented the following as the goals for the fourth quarter:

  Goals for the SSS Programming Staff for 2008.Q4

  1. Update the hardware setup portion of the OPT with a user
     interface that experts can use to configure WIDAR.  [JR, DH]

  2. Add user help to the OPT, SCT, & RCT. [LS, BT]

  3. Pass scheduling constraints to current scheduler. [BT, BB]

  4. Use the E2E user database for authentication and authorization of users
     of SSS applications, beginning with the OPT. [SW]

  5. Improve the process by which EVLA Observe files are submitted to the
     observatory. [SW]

  6. Learn how to fetch proposals from E2E. [DH, BT, SW, BB, E2E]


  In addition to the above goals, i'd like to see us use any time spent
  in holding patterns on improving the user experience with all the tools.
  This means responding to new requests, plowing through JIRA issues, and
  using the tools ourselves and suggesting improvements.


  In the first quarter of next year i'd like to:

    * Keep going w/ hardware config. [JR, DH]

    * Get back to the scheduler. [BT, SW, DH]

    * Build a new tool that will create projects from proposals
      and let bigwigs mess with allocated time and other items
      that regular users may not set. [BT, DH]