1) What is iSpy?
iSpy a general-purpose visualisation program that is mainly used
as a CMS event display for online detector monitoring, offline reconstruction,
physics analysis, and public relations.
The
iSpy philosphy is to deliver a user-focussed high-quality
and performant interactive application that is very easy to install
and use on multiple platforms.
2) How do I install and run iSpy?
Just download
iSpy from the
iSpy home page
and double-click the icon to start (on Linux type "chmod +x ispy" then "./ispy").
There is no need to install any other software because
iSpy is a fully-bound executable.
In less than a minute you can be viewing real or
simulated CMS events, served from the Web.
3) How does iSpy get access to CMS data?
iSpy reads standalone
.ig files containing
collections of physics and other objects.
These are accessible to
iSpy over the Web or from
a local file system.
The
iSpy team maintains a comprehensive set of CMSSW analysers
that write CMS data to
.ig files, including raw data,
reconstructed objects, analysis objects and Monte-Carlo information,
if available.
.ig files are produced continually in the CMS online
and, as needed, for selected MC samples.
4) Can I make my own .ig files to view with iSpy?
Yes, it is straightforward to invoke our CMSSW analysers in your own CMSSW
program to create
.ig files that can then be read by
iSpy.
You can even create new analysers to write your own
data to be visualised by
iSpy.
Show me how to create my own .ig file
5) Is iSpy stable with respect to CMSSW and CMS data formats?
Yes, because it uses a very stable
.ig file format.
Multiple versions of
iSpy can read the
same data files, even if they contain different data collections produced
by many different CMSSW versions.
6) Can I change the colors / cuts used by iSpy, without recompiling?
Yes, you can. The
iSpy Style Sheet reference
gives you a description of how to do that.
Notice that this is an experimental feature.
7) Can I change the view contents, the camera position, etc, without recompiling?
Yes, you can. The
iSpy Layout reference
gives you a description of how to do that.
Notice that this is an experimental feature and documentation
needs improvement.
8) What kind of format is .ig? Where can I find information about it?
A .ig file is a zip archive (unzippable via
unzip or similar)
containing one file per event. Each event file uses a relational database like
structure, described using
JSON. For a more
extensive description look
here.
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