CondDBAdmin user manual

I'm preparing a small project (currently only in ~marcocle/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin) meant to provide all the tools needed for the administration of the LHCb conditions database. Here I want to describe what the project can do.

Introduction

To start using the project, one has to go to the directory ~marcocle/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin/Main/cmt and configure the basic environment for SLC3 applications.

cd ~marcocle/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin/Main/cmt
setenv CMTPROJECTPATH $LHCBPROJECTPATH
unsetenv CMTPATH

Commands/Actions/Activities

Initialize the GRID proxy certificate (for LFCReplicaService usage)

cmt run grid-proxy-init

Start the CondDBBrowser

cmt CondDBBrowser

Create a local copy of current SQLite databases

cmt SQLiteLocalCopy

Run DetDescChecks LoadDDDB on the local copy

cmt CheckDDDB

Use coral_replica_manager (for LFCReplicaService)

cmt run coral_replica_manager

Compute the differences between two databases

cmt run diff_db.py <orig> <orig tag> <new> <new tag> <diff>

orig

connection string for the original database

orig tag

tag used in the original database

new

connection string for the database containing the data to extract

new tag

tag used in the new database

diff

connection string for the database to be created to store the changes

Insert the content of a database (head) into another one

cmt run merge_db.py <diff> <dest>

diff

the database containing the data to be inserted into the other database (typically the result of a "diff"), the head version is used

dest

the database where to store the data (e.g. the master database)

Insert new files into the database

cmt run python '$CONDDBUIROOT'/python/copy_files_to_db.py -s <source dir> -c <dest db>

source dir

the directory containing the new files

dest db

the database where to store the data (e.g. the master database)

Dump a snapshot of the database to files

cmt run python '$CONDDBUIROOT'/python/dump_db_to_files.py -c <db> [-d <dest dir>]

db

the database containing the data to exported

dest dir

the base directory where to create the files

Operative instructions

Essentially a list of things I do to include changes into the official database.

The idea is to formalize the procedure so that I can then translate it into a user-friendly script.

Requirements on the user provided data

To be efficient in the insertion of the data into the conditions database, I need that the users use some care in preparing the data to be inserted.

• The changes have to be prepared against a well defined tag.
  While we use SQLite the tag can be also "HEAD as of SQLDDDB vXrY".
• Detailed information about the changes should be included.
• The partial DB or the files should contain only the modified files (not strictly requested if they can be identified easily).
• Special care has to be used with removed files and files whose name contain a '@':
  • removed files must appear in the list of modified files as empty files
  • if the filename contains '@' they are stored in the DB as "dictionaries"; the part of the name after '@' is the name of the dictionary, while the first part is a "key" to the file data and the list of keys for a given dictionary cannot be modified.
• The used should have tested the changes with LoadDDDB.
  If a special version of the software is needed, it has to be made clear.

Operations

• Copy the files into ~/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin/Main/TODO, inside a drectory called `date -I`_description. The changes for a partition have to go in a further subdirectory with the name of the partition.
• Go to ~/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin/Main/TODO and run ./make_changes.csh.
  It creates the DB layers to be tested.
• From ~/cmtuser/CondDBAdmin/Main/cmt run:

  gaudirun.py -v $DETDESCCHECKSROOT/options/LoadDDDB.opts ../TODO/UseTestDBs.py
     

  to overlay the test layers on top of the HEAD version, or

  gaudirun.py -v $DETDESCCHECKSROOT/options/LoadDDDB.opts ../TODO/UseTestDBs.py ../TODO/DC06tag.py
     

  for the DC06-repro0710 version.

-- MarcoClemencic - 07 Apr 2008