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Software Development Metrics & Information Summary for C1 2008

01 January 2008 through 15 February 2008

The Plan of Record used for this cycle can be found at PlanOfRecordC12008.

Overview

12 SDD members worked ~3078 hours in C1 2008 over 34 days (3% division administration and planning, 65% cycle commitments, 1% preventive maintenance, 2% GBT operations and user support, 9% overhead, and 20% excused absences).

overvieweffortC12008.jpg

Project Allocation

The cycle commitments were allocated over 8 major projects: Dynamic Scheduling, PTCS, Mustang, Cicada/GUPPI, K-band Focal Plane Array, Calibration, RFI, and Software Continuing Maintenance and Enhancements. We also worked on 1 other projects this cycle to which resources were not allocated at the beginning of the cycle - RRI. In the chart below, "other" is used as a catch-all for those cycle commitments which are not associated with a major project.

projecteffortC12008.jpg

The projects are further broken down into the individual commitments in the next section.

Cycle Commitments

The cycle commitments for C1 consisted of 44 commitments. A summary of each major commitment is discussed later in its own section. Of the 44 commitments, 42 were met satisfactorily (of these 35 were part of larger efforts which will continue into future cycles). 7 of the commitments received little or no effort because they were given a lower priority than other commitments. 2 commitments were not met satisfactorily; both DSS: Create, Read, Update, and Delete and DSS: Device Availability are expected to be finished in early C2 2008 after sponsor testing is complete.

commitmentsoverviewC12008.jpg

Operational and User Support

The items listed below pertain to time spent supporting GBT operation. These tasks usually involve helping users, fixing/troubleshooting system problems, and fixing/troubleshooting lab test environment problems. Note: Effort estimates reflect total time elapsed, i.e. how long did it take to fix the problem start to finish - not the sum total of each person's time.

Items:

Key:

Commitment Highlights

Dynamic Scheduling: Handle Fixed and Windowed Sessions

Information on the Dynamic Scheduling project can be found at the Dynamic Scheduling Project Page and Dynamic Scheduling Web Home. The effect of weather conditions, both wind and opacity, on high frequency astronomy is well known. Currently, the GBT is using a fairly basic dynamic scheduling system which neither allow for rapid changes in the weather nor for long spells of good or bad weather. To maximize our use of good weather, we need to implement a true dynamic scheduling system on the telescope. The design and implementation of such a system is the goal of this project. This cycle, the Dynamic Scheduling Project team spent most of their time developing project planning materials for the upcoming proof of concept tests. Last cycle we developed a minimal dynamic scheduling system - front to back. This cycle, we worked toward adding the simulation and scheduling of windowed and fixed sessions. We have been working closely with the NRAO e2e group, who are contributing 0.25 FTE software development effort.

This task was allocated ~480 person-hours of effort, but expended only ~409. This cycle the ~71 person-hour discrepancy in actual vs. allocated effort can be roughly broken up as follows: 36% continuing education activities, 35% excused absences, 12% Software CM&E, 12% RRI, and 5% other.

PTCS: Add DIO interface to Linux Holography Manager

The holography backend was originally deployed years ago on a VxWorks system with an MCB interface. The system was limited to 200 ms dumps due to the combination of the VxWorks OS and the MCB interface. We need the backend to dump much faster in order to properly map the GBT's panels. A new host platform and operating system is required, and a new interface to the data stream and the command stream will be created. The external interface to the M&C system will remain unchanged, except for the volume of data recorded, and the legal command values for integration time.

We allocated ~323 person-hours for this effort and expended ~286 person-hours this cycle. This item will be continued into next cycle. The majority of the allocated effort vs. actual effort 37 person-hour discrepancy is due to unexpected excused absence.

Mustang: Creation of Ygor Manager

Mustang is currently controlled and read out using NASA's freely available, Java-based Instrument Remote Control (IRC) system. This system has served admirably during early testing and commissioning of the instrument, but for long-term operations we would like to replace it with software written in-house. The primary reason for this is that, generally, IRC duplicates the functionality of the Ygor monitor and control system. The maintenance and upkeep of this separate monitor and control system entails significant work, which we can greatly reduce with an up-front effort to port the specific DAQ and control capabilities to our M&C system. Visit the Mustang Wiki for more project-specific information.

There were at least 13 separate activities going on as part of the Mustang effort. These include the Mustang Meta-MR, PCI Initialization, Mustang Crate Control, Mustang Tower Control, Mustang FITS Writer, Parser, High Level Parameters, Manager Startup, Crate Command Monitoring, Data Monitoring, Collect Detector Bias Curves, Spider Tests and also general support.

Work continued this cycle on creating an Ygor Manager for Mustang. We completed the first in-system tests with the Ygor Manager this cycle and the results were very positive, so much so that MelindaMello and PaulMarganian will transfer the bulk of their development time to PTCS and Dynamic Scheduling respectively next cycle.

We allocated ~664 person-hours of effort this cycle and only used ~521. This cycle most of the 143 person-hour discrepancy in actual vs. allocated effort can be roughly broken up as follows: 31% unexpected excused absence, 20% continuing education, 15% overhead (new employee paperwork), 15% Dynamic Scheduling, 10% Software Continuing Maintenance and Enhancements, and 9% other.

KFPA: Data Pipeline (& General GBT Data Analysis Planning)/M&C

The goal of the generic GBT data analysis planning activity is to evaluate the current effectiveness of the GBT data reduction package, GBTIDL, identify its current deficiencies, and to plan for the future of GBT data reduction. We expect this effort to continue into the coming cycles and evolve into an effort to implement the recommendations which sprout from the analysis. However for the next fiscal year, our efforts will focus on the data reduction pipeline software for the K-band Focal Plane Array specifically. We plan to use this effort as a case in point for future pipeline and data reduction planning because much of the KFPA pipeline is generalizable to other GBT receivers and backends as well.

This cycle much work was done to develop the KFPA data pipeline design and KFPA M&C software design. Next cycle this work will be presented at the Conceptual Design Review.

We allocated ~165 person-hours of effort for this task and expended ~156.

RFI: Known Sources Database

This application is designed to create an application that will serve as the administrative interface to the RfiDataBase. When RFI is reported at Green Bank, the RFI group gathers frequency and other signal characteristics and then consults allocation tables, FCC databases, the NRQZ database, and possibly also monitors and DFs (direction finds) the interference in order to identify it. If identification is successful, we may approach the responsible party for either legally required compliance or voluntary cooperation. After that, all we have learned from this considerable effort is filed in one of several disconnected and loosely organized formats (email records, NRQZ database, spreadsheets living on individual PC's, etc.) where it is not readily accessible nor easily searchable. Deliverables from this software effort would provide us with a central, searchable repository for this knowledge.

We allocated ~130 person-hours of effort for this task and expended ~84. Of the 46 person-hour discrepancy, ~80% went into excused absence, 15% went into diversity outreach (Shelton), and 5% other.

GUPPI: Conceptual Design and Very-Expert-User Interface of GUPPI Software

The Green Bank Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument (GUPPI) is the next-generation pulsar processor for the GBT and is built on the CASPER platform. GUPPI development aims for first-light in the early months of 2008 and requires at least an expert-user interface to provide simple controls and access to its parameters. The short-term goal is to provide a lightweight interface to be used during the engineering and commissioning phase, with support for later integration with the Configuration Tool and Astrid. This lightweight interface is to be used to prototype what the user would see in the Astrid backend tab for GUPPI. The Very-Expert-User Interface and Control Framework for GUPPI (i.e., GUPPI Controller) aims to support GUPPI's first light requirements and provide a simplified user interface with full-access to all GUPPI parameters in a framework which is portable -- for potential use at other institutions -- and is modular -- to support various client-server communication models upstream. This development is being done in coordination with the NRAO e2e group, who are graciously lending 0.25 FTE.

We allocated ~111 person-hours of effort for this task and expended ~89. The 22 person-hour discrepancy is due in part to JoeBrandt's time going toward higher priority PTCS items and in part to unplanned excused absence.

We expect to hire another 1-year term software engineer for Green Bank next cycle in order to help with GUPPI software development.

Continuing Education

Continuing education activities this cycle included weekly software lunch discussions which spanned a number of topics of general software interest and GBT project-specific including: Trajectory Jerk-limiting Presentation (PTCS), Representational State Transfer (REST) (web development, e.g. Dynamic Scheduling), OO Javascript (web development, e.g. Dynamic Scheduling), the Knapsack Algorithm (Dynamic Scheduling), Haskell: Parallelism and Concurrency, SuperComputing 2007, and AstroGPU 2007.

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