Introduction

In analysis of experimental data it is useful to test content of the data files. To perform this task LCLS users need in flexible interactive tool. We have evaluated a couple of currently available generic tools which present HDF5 data, HDFView and ViTables. Both of these tools have numerous pros and cons, but, definitely, as is, they can not cover all LCLS-specific graphical demands; HDFView has very primitive graphics and can not plot LCLS camera images, ViTables does not have any graphics at all, except for GUI. Extension of these packages for LCLS needs is possible, but requires significant intervention in the code of these quite specific applications. In order to keep flexibility in implementation of graphical algorithms we decided to develop our own exploring tools for XTC and HDF5 file formats. After discussion of the platform for the HDF5 Explorer we came to conclusion that most clean and compact code can be written on Python with broad exploitation of standard libraries for HDF5 access, graphics, and GUIs, such as h5py, matplotlib, and PyQt4, respectively. In this note we overview features, functionality, and status of the HDF5 Explorer. XTC Explorer has its own documentation.

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