IU QuarkNet meetings

Friday, March 23, 2001

Room 025 School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) <http://www-slis.lib.indiana.edu/>, Main Library

Meeting time 4:00-4:45PM

Attendance: Rick Van Kooten, Dave Blair, Javed Mostafa

Agenda: Discuss the data base requirements.

We discussed the data base requirements and identified the following characteristics:

Data to store:

1. Telescope ID, experiment ID, time stamp, 4 binary and 4-12bit FP numbers, from 6 sites, each site having a data rate of about 2 Hz.

2. Data maintained in a central repository

3. Sites can query database to access data.

4. Data update daemon on central repository or on telescope computers. This daemon will check the file on the telescope computer to see if it has been changed. If the file has been changed, it is sent to the central server, where the data file is appended and the database updated.

Daemon (day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ www.foldoc.org /From the mythological meaning (variant of demon, a supernatural being of Greek mythology intermediate between gods and men), later rationalized as the acronym "Disk And Execution MONitor") A program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon).

Computer should be a separate server with about 10 GB storage. ($1500)

The following tools were identified to meet the requirement:

· Database software Oracle http://www.oracle.com/ip/index.html (do not consider Microsoft Access) Oracle academic license probably about $500

· Apache HTTP server software http://httpd.apache.org/ Apache is free

· Linux OS http://www.linux.com/ free

· Perl programming language http://perl.apache.org/

· Cold Fusion is an alternative to perl that may make it easier to add and modify database access http://www.coldfusion.com/

Javed estimated that we should plan for about 1 month development time (3 weeks development, and one week testing)

We should consider using University Information Technology Service (UITS) http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/ for the development process. It is likely that COAS will support the software development

Requirements should be specified before contracting UITS, it should include things like entry points, firewalls, password access, database structure, request forms and documentation.

· Two issues must be explored at the various sites: Are IP's permanently assigned for each machine on the school site computers, or are they dynamically assigned?

· Are there firewall issues at the school sites that would prevent the central server's daemon from talking to telescope computers?

Rick will make the initial contact with UITS, Dave writes the minutes