National
e-Science
Centre
Atlas e-Science Project – Introductory software
training course
e-Science Institute 27th April 2006
"The 2006 ATLAS e-Science introductory tutorial was held on the 27th April. 18 people, from
ATLAS groups across the country, attended. Most of the delegates had recently been hired by
the ATLAS e-Science project, and were completely new to the software.
The aim of the course was to provide a wide-ranging introduction to the ATLAS offline software.
The tutorial covered the most basic tasks, such as using the CERN LXPLUS Linux cluster and
the mass storage facility Castor, and then went on to give a hands-on demonstration of the full
simulation chain, from Monte Carlo event generation through to detector simulation and
eventually to the physics analysis and event display facilities. The exercises were all published on
web-pages and were completed by the attendees during the event. The latter part of the
afternoon demonstrated the procedure for installing the software on a local Linux machine, and
finally information was given on documentation and sources of help. The materials will be
maintained on the web and will be accessible via the ATLAS computing documentation web
pages.
The comments from attendees after the event were positive - most seemed, by the end of the
day, to have been given the requisite basic knowledge to begin using and developing the
software as part of their work, which was the ultimate aim of the tutorial.
Thanks are due to the three tutors - James Catmore, Steve Lloyd and Zdenek Maxa, and to the
National e-Science centre for the use of their facilities, secretarial support and for keeping us
going throughout the day with coffee, tea and lunch."
James Catmore