Minutes of the CMS GRID computing meeting (RAL, 31/3/00)
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P W Jeffreys: Status of UK and EH GRID activities
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The GRID represents a distributed computing topology, and therefore implies considerable resources for Tiers 2 and 3. The MONARC computing model is used to specify a hierarchical grid. To finance the GRID, several bids for resources are in progress:

1) PPARC proposed in Nov. 99 to lead cross-research council bid
   for GRID infrastructure.
2) CERN is bidding to the E.U. for grant to link national GRID's.
3) A JIF bid is being made by LHC experiments to prototype the 
   UK GRID.

For these bids to be successful, we must work in a transparent way. An interim   UK committee to help establish the UK GRID has been setup and is chaired by A.Halley.
  The CERN bid to the E.U. is only likely to be for 10M ECU, but more money may follow later. Several work packages are associated with the bid, and these WP's have each been assigned to named people in the various countries. The UK is in particular responsible for "GRID application monitoring" and "Data Storage". The final draft of the bid must be ready by 14/4/00. 

K.Bell: Status of CMS computing and software
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  OSCAR (detector simulation based on GEANT) is proceeding too slowly.
  FAMOS (fast detector simulation) is proceeding even more slowly. It was questioned whether we really need it. 
  ORCA (event reconstruction) is currently in prototype phase, but is already being used for large scale production of events. All subdetectors will be implemented in next release of code. More than 100 people are developing/using ORCA, and it runs at several institutes outside of CERN.
  IGUANA (event display and analysis histogramming) partially functional, but behind schedule. Perhaps IGUANA should have possibility of using ROOT for tasks such as histogramming ?
  Future plans: 2001 - DAQ TDR; 2002 - Computing TDR and fully functional software; 2003-4 - Mock data challenge.

G.Patrick: What is the CMS (UK) data model ?
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  Glen pointed out that data will exist in several forms, from the voluminous raw data to the compact tagged events. We need to clarify how physicists will access data/MC, which of these data sets they need, and where these data will be stored etc. Slides of Glen’s talk can be found in http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/cmsukcomp/cmsukmar00.ppt.

G Heath: Establishing a CMS Tier-2 centre in the UK
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  For particle physics as a whole, we expect one Tier-1 centre (RAL) and five Tier-2 centres in the UK. It may make more sense for CMS to share part of each Tier-2 centre than to take full control of only one of them. Bristol could provide people/space to help prototype a Tier-2 centre, though IC and Brunel also expressed an interest.

Discussion
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  D.Newbold agreed to take over the CMS software and computing board from K.Bell.
    
    D.Britton was endorsed as CMS member of the interim UK GRID steering committee.

  It was felt that we should support the CERN bid to the E.U., by testing an "HEP application" of the GRID in the UK. The following proposal was made:
 
a)	We will get the CMS software chain (ORCA etc.) working in all 
      UK institutes. Glen Patrick may participate. However, additional
      manpower is needed. In particular, there is a requirement
   for someone with expertise in OO databases if this is to 
   proceed.
b)	We (possibly with help from someone at Brunel) will make the 
      GRID "Middleware" fully installed and functional at all UK
      institutes. (This does such things allowing for batch job
      submission from one UK CMS institute to any other.)
c) We would then use this infrastructure either for Monte Carlo
   trigger studies or for test-beam studies. The former might
   involve generating MC events at one institute and then
   studying the e/gamma trigger at another. The latter would
   involve analysing the large volumes of ECAL test-beam data
   which are expected in future years.

D. Newbold and G.Heath agreed to draft a more detailed description of this proposal and circulate it for comment. Early involvement in the GRID activities should strengthen the UK CMS case for attracting additional computing support, either from university departments and RAL, or through the 'Responsive RA' initiative.