Posted by s.hettrick on 29 November 2011 - 11:50am

The Software Sustainability Institute has been invited to assess an international Google Code project led by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

Ten years ago, the Scientific Technology Facilities Council (STFC) started work on providing a catalogue for data collected during scientific experiments carried out in its laboratories at Harwell and Daresbury. The software, known as I-Cat, for Information Catalogue, is now is in continuous use with the Diamond Light Source, the Central Laser Facility, and the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (which is related to our MAUS project). Every day, I-Cat catalogues millions of files. Other large experimental facilities have adopted I-Cat and it is in production use at ILL in Grenoble, France, SNS in Tennessee, USA, and Elettra in Trieste, Italy. Other large facilities around the world, in Australia, Spain and Germany are considering it for use with their work.

In 2008, STFC decided to make the software for I-Cat available as open source. There is an active collaboration, led by a group in the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, which is hosted by Google Code. The software is available on the Google Code website.

The collaboration is growing, and so the group has invited the Software Sustainability Institute to review its work. A senior member of the Institute will work with the I-Cat team in January to advise the team on how to manage its work and the software which it is creating.

If you are interested in an evaluation of your projects or development problem, let us know.