Information for Offline QA and Production Monitoring Shifts - 2001

Welcome to the STAR Offline Quality Assurance and DST Production Monitoring Shift home page. As STAR approaches completion and becomes more and more complex it is imperative that we work to insure the quality of STAR data so that our collaboration may continue to produce many new physics results in the efficient and timely manner we have enjoyed so far. This year there will be eight new operational detectors in STAR! These are the SVT, EMC-barrel, EMC-SMD-eta grid, EMC-SMD-phi grid, FTPC-East, FTPC-West, TOF-patch and the Forward pi0 detector (FPD). Our job is to monitor the validity of the data, calibrations and event reconstruction from the full experiment. From a practical standpoint it is only possible for Offline QA to detect fairly large problems and to monitor only about 10% of the total DST production. But even this level of QA is beneficial. In the following I will attempt to answer the most common questions about the shift work. Following this are links to the relevent pages which you will need to become familiar with prior to your first week on shift.

• No programming skills, such as in C++, are required. All the tasks are web based "point-and-click" activities. However, you should have valid RCF and AFS accounts since you may need direct access to the histogram postscript files or to the example Offline QA Shift Report Form file.
• General knowledge of the STAR detector, reconstruction methods and calibration issues are expected since the purpose of these shifts is to spot problems with the hardware, DST production and event reconstruction, or with the calibrations. Expert level knowledge is not required however.
• All persons are required to be at BNL for their first week of Offline QA shift service. This is motivated by the fact that many unforeseen problems will very likely arise during these shifts and quick, real time help, which is more likely to be available at BNL, is essential to insure daily shift productivity.
• Subsequent Offline QA shifts may be done from non-BNL sites provided adequate web access to the Auto QA system can be demonstrated from the remote site. This is motivated by the reality of year round DST production and the very likely need to eventually have at least one QA shift per day throughout the lifetime of STAR.
• For at least the first part of this year's run shifts 2 and 3 will be manned. These are from 07:30-16:30 and 16:30-00:30 BNL time, respectively. When doing Offline QA shifts at non-BNL sites the actual times may be adjusted to be more convenient to your local time zone provided this does not overlap with another QA shift. For example, persons located east of BNL may want to take shift #2 at an earlier time while those west of BNL could take shift #3 at a later time.
• There are no special training schools planned this year; the present web based documentation should suffice. But if you have further questions please send email to Lanny Ray, ray@physics.utexas.edu.
• Once DST production is running at full capacity the offline QA shift will be very demanding and will probably require the full 8 hours to complete. In fact it is expected that the data volume which can be checked during the QA shifts will have to be further throttled as STAR's data acquisition and DST production rates approach design levels.
• The offline QA shift work involves the following tasks, all of which are web based:
  • Fetch the latest set of DST production jobs using the Auto QA browser and compare a standard set of histograms to a reference.
  • Monitor the DST production farm periodically and report problems to the Production staff via 'starprod-hn' hypernews.
  • Monitor the Auto QA production and notify 'starqa-hn' hypernews of any problems.
  • Fill in a web based report form listing the jobs which have been QA-ed and giving detailed comments as needed.
  • Notify the appropriate people about suspected problems with the hardware, calibrations, production, or reconstruction software.
• If you are not already subscribed to the 'starqa-hn' and 'starprod-hn' hypernews forums then please do so since this is the principal means for communicating with the production crew. See the HyperNews home page or select "hypernews" from the left panel on the STAR Home page. Follow the instructions for subscribing.
• This year we will have an Offline QA Oversight team to assist and supervise the shift crew to insure that meaningful QA work is getting done.

Welcome aboard!

Lanny Ray, The University of Texas at Austin
June 7, 2001

Documents for the Offline QA Shift Crew:

1. Summary of Offline QA and Production Monitoring Shift Duties
2. QuickStart Instructions for the Auto QA Browser
3. QA Production Monitoring Instructions
4. DST Production Monitoring Instructions
5. Offline QA Shift Report Preparation and Instructions
6. Offline QA Shift Report Web Based Form
7. Offline QA Shift Report Template and Example

References:

1. QA in STAR: purpose and general framework
2. Description of Offline QA Shift Histograms for the Year 2001 Run
3. Description of Offline QA Shift Scalers
4. Peter Jacob's Description of Offline QA Shifts for the Y2000 run

Contacts:

1. QA Experts
2. Other Experts