The conditions database is designed to allow a running analysis or reconstruction module to access information about the run "conditions". In our current environment the "conditions" includes the entire detector description, since this is not hardwired into the framework at all.
The org.lcsim conditions framework is designed to be very flexible, both in use and in implementation. Our current implementation looks up conditions based on the detector name. The conditions themselves are stored as an arbitrary collection of files, either stored in a filesystem or in a zip file. The most common files used are property files (name, value pairs) or XML files (e.g. for geometry), however there are no constraints placed on the files.
The recommended format for storing conditions file collections is in a zip file. The conditions database includes facilities for downloading .zip files from the web and caching them on the user's machine, so no web connection is required when running analysis or reconstruction, as long as the required conditions have been previously accessed.
The current system uses the following algorithm for accessing conditions based on detector name.
As an example we will use the name "myDetector".
Recursively translate the detector name using alias files. The alias files are property files stored in one or more of the following locations.
http://www.lcsim.org/detectors/alias.properties |
Once this translation is complete, the resulting name is checked as follows.
myDetector: file:/path/to/myDetector.zip |
myDetector: file:/path/to/myDetector |
http://www.lcsim.org/detectors/ |
If none of these succeed in finding the conditions for the specied detector the program will terminate.