No. 120 (00256)

Family name : Moneta
Given name : Lorenzo
Affiliation : 
Abbreviation : 
E-mail address : Lorenzo.Moneta@cern.ch
Title : The SEAL project: Common core libraries and services for LHC
        applications  
Authors : Jacek Generowicz, Massimo Marino, Pere Mato, Lorenzo Moneta,
          Stefan Roiser, Lassi Tuura, Matthias Winkler 
Abstract : 
The CERN LHC experiments began the LHC Computing Grid project in
2001. One of the project's aims is to develop common software
infrastructure based on a development vision shared by the participating
experiments. The SEAL subproject provides common foundation and mathematical
libraries, services and utilities identified by the project's
architecture blueprint report. This requires a broad range of
functionality that no individual package suitably covers. SEAL thus
selects external and experiment-developed packages, integrates them in a
coherent whole, develops new code for missing functionality, and
provides support to the experiments. 
We describe the set of basic
components sufficient for development of higher level framework components and
specialisations. Examples of such components are a plug-in manager, an
object dictionary, object whiteboard and basic framework services for message 
reporting, component loading and configurations. 
In addition, scripting services provide, through binding for scripting 
language, such as Python and CINT, of the basic services, a "component bus" 
that allows easy integration between components.   
We present the design and implementation of some of these components, 
examples of their Python bindings and the underlying foundation and 
mathematical libraries in some detail.