(Links to the slides presented will be added in when they are received)
Review of `Requirements and Use Cases' report
We went through the list of 356 individual comments made by the
reviewers. Due to lack of time we concentrated on the main comments
on the subject of requirements.
R. Lucas will propose a full list of replies by March 11th, this
will be checked by the committee members before March 18th; then a
final list of replies will be sent back to the reviewers a few days
later. The review will take place before end of March.
Project News (S. Guilloteau)
ASAC met one week before in Florence. For the 3-way partnership
ASAC strongly supported first the ALMA Compact Array and next the
increase of the number of receiver bands. A subject of deep concern
was the proposition that was made by US of reducing each partner's
contribution by 20% (instead of the 10% previously mentioned).
In Europe the Phase 2 proposal has been prepared, a 2nd version should
be completed next week, including the operation concept.
The goal is to have a three-partnership agreement by the end of year
The Array Configuration PDR took place in Grenoble. The location
of the array center was selected. Configurations should be designed
to obtain Gaussian beams in snapshot mode (except for the largest
configuration), and to leave open the option to have either fixed,
scheduled configurations, of a continuous reconfiguration scheme.
As might have been expected the issue of SB groups raised some
discussion. SG proposed that the overall efficiency might be
improved by grouping SBs using standard (observatory supplied)
preambles, across projects. Those wider groups would have to be
defined automatically each time these kind of SBs are checked in by
proposers.
Other questions or issues discussed (not necessarily relevant to
the analysis, more to the requirements ...):
is `getArchivePolicy' linked to SB or Program ?
one should compile a database of calibrator fluxes and
polarizations from the calibrator archive
pointing rms should be included in observing conditions taken
into account for scheduling.
In the pointing UCs we might precise the criterion to stop
(require the pointing spec. to be met by only a fraction of
antennas).
the longevity of SB is a policy issue
On the same subject Mel Wright presented a more general view of
Observing Objects
Updates to the requirements and Use Cases (see below) made necessary
after this first analysis work will be made after the Review (we'll
discuss them at the next phone meeting).
Off-line analysis requirements
Several prospective, short presentations were given:
Mosaics and inclusion of short spacings by F. Viallefond
Single dish spectroscopy by J. Mangum
Single dish continuum by P. Schilke
GRID computing by J. Richer
VLBI requirements by M. Wright
We recognized that the overlapping needs for
the pipelines and the offline analysis would best be met by reusing the same
package. In anycase the pipeline machinery should be package-independent.
The plans for producing the report are the following: a group
(B. Clark, F. Gueth, S. Myers, P. Schilke) will be responsible for
preparing the report. The goal is to have a draft by end of June. A
detailed outline will be presented to the whole Committee (end of
March). Contributions by others will naturally be welcomed too.
The next step after the requirements will be a full reuse
analysis on existing packages; the way to proceed is still open.
A PDR on data flow is proposed for the end of the year.
A PDR on data flow is proposed for the end of the year.
Operational Issues
J. Schwarz presented the questions on Science operational issues he
thinks are raised for ALMA (see his document sent on the SSR
list). These will be presented to ASAC.
These issues were discussed at length during the meeting. We plan
to inform ASAC of the assumptions that we had made on those
operational issues and on which our requirements are more or less
relying. To achieve this the Committee should within two weeks
send to R. Lucas their comments on Joe's document and he will
summarize these in a text to be sent to ASAC and the Science groups.
ACA Issues
ACA implications were evocated at several occasions in the
meeting. Though ACA is not formally decided (we should expect more
after the next ACC meeting in April) we will start to investigate
the implications to our requirements since they are expected to be
important. The idea is to add an Appendix to our report so that the
additional requirements are well visible.
Use Cases
The observing modes Use Cases are obviously incomplete. An
example is a Use Case for sideband gain ratio measurement
(S.Guilloteau volunteered) and Use Cases for special modes (Solar,
pulsar observing ...), an Use Case more representative of subarray
use (as needed by ACA ?) ...
The general Use Cases should also include and UC to send
information to User as data is taken, and a UC describing the
Quick Look pipeline.
Next phone meeting
Should be Wednesday April 4th, 16h UT.
Next face-to-face meeting
Should be around mid-july, in the US (Chicago airport ?)
Action Items
R. Lucas to prepare replies to the comments and send them to the
whole SSR for review (done)
All to check these replies and send corrections to R. Lucas
before March 18th
All to send to R. Lucas before March 16th their comments
to Joe's operational issues document, in order for him to summarize
the Committee views on those issues.
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