[evla-sw-discuss] correlator output team raison d'etre

[Martin Pokorny]

Taking into account the feedback I received in response to my initial
message, here's the next iteration of the list of questions that the
correlator output team will address. I think we can now proceed with
assembling the team, and getting to work. As a suggestion, I nominate
Michael Rupen, John Benson, Rich Moeser, Bruce Rowen and myself to be on
the team. We might need to enlist the help of others from time to time
as well.

- Where do the files written by the CBE go? Do the files get written to
a staging area, or directly to the archive?
- If CBE files are written to a staging area, how do other components
(DCAF and TelCal) access the data, and how do the files get written to
the archive? In short, how does the staging area work?
- Where, that is, on what machines located in which places, do the
staging area, archive, DCAF and TelCal reside? What is the physical
architecture and deployment plan? [The group should only consider how 
the archive, DCAF and TelCal get correlator data products, and how this 
might affect the architecture and deployment.]
- How does the RTDD fit in with the architecture? Should it, or does it
need to?
- Where do station board data products go? Which products go into the
SDM, which into the BDF, and which into the monitor database? How do
products get where they need to go?
- Where can EVLA reuse ALMA software (in the context of the correlator
output and its processing)?
- What information do we need to effectively diagnose correlator
problems, and where should that information go (and reside)?
- What do we do with the orphan outputs (radar mode, phased array data,
...)?
- What flags should the correlator produce? [This seems tangential to
the system-level architecture in the present context, but is an
important question nevertheless. I'm not sure what to do with it.]

Last chance for comments.

-- 
Martin