Data-centric Graphical User Interface of the ATLAS Event Index Service

Abstract

The Event Index service of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC keeps references to all real and simulated events. Hadoop Map files and HBase tables are used to store the Event Index data, a subset of data is also stored in the Oracle database. Several user interfaces are currently used to access and search the data, from a simple command line interface, through a programmable API, to sophisticated graphical web services. It provides a dynamic graph-like overview of all available data (and data collections). Data are shown together with their relations, like paternity or overlaps. Each data entity then gives users a set of actions available for the referenced data. Some actions are provided directly by the Event Index system, others are just interfaces to different ATLAS services. In many cases, specialized views are offered for detailed data inspection, such as histograms, Venn diagrams, etc. This paper documents the current status of the service, its features and performance. The future system evolution to the new Event Index architecture based on the Apache Phoenix is also described as well as possible extension to a more general framework for giving a new, more intuitive access to experiment data.