[asac] July email on offline status

[Christine Wilson]

Hi, everyone,

Here is some more information on the offline system relevant to our 
software charge for January.

The following email was circulated by Debra Shephard on July 12, 2005. It 
is an update on the testing status of the offline system. It contains a 
link to a summary of the three user tests, which in turn contains links to 
the actual summary and reports from the three user tests.

Chris

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Many of you have expressed an interest over the past few years about
the status of the Astronomical Information and Processing System
(AIPS++) software development for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array
(ALMA) project.  I promised at various meetings and in many individual
conversations to send out an update about how our software testing
is going - so here it is.  

As you know, ALMA has conducted external user tests every 6 months for
the past 1.5 years to ensure that the software development is adequate
for ALMA needs.  To date, 3 test cycles have been successfully
completed.  The focus has been: 1) single field interferometry; 2)
mosaic interferometry; and 3) combining single dish and synthesis
data.  Recently I wrote up a brief summary of our testing status and
put this on the ALMA Computing IPT Usertests web page.

Please note, the software is NOT ready for the general user yet - and
this is not an invitation to download the software and start playing
with it because it is continually being modified during this very
active development period.  When we are ready for a wider user base I
will send out another update.  Please let me know if you do not wish
to be included in future e-mail test announcments.

If you would like to review the summary and obtain links to the
detailed test reports and testing web sites, please see

http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/pub/Usertests/WebHome/test.summary.jul05.pdf

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely, 

Debra Shepherd
ALMA Offline Subsystem Scientist
NRAO, ALMA Computing IPT
dshepher at nrao.edu