Email were sent to all software sub-system coordinators asking for volunteers. Feedback were gathered prior (in 2006). Initial was to set a review process by the STAR analysis meeting. What was call for is an informal meeting to gather further requirements and feedback based on an overview presentation of what already exists. The idea was to leave the formal review process for the next STAR Collaboration Meeting and give the project a good opportunity for one more wave of feedback so consolidation and convergence could be achieved by "then". The below attendees answered and volunteered to be on an informal pannel discussion. Past requirements + presentation from Valeri promised.

Attendees: Helen Caines, Thomas Ullrich, Subhasis Chattopadhyay, Richard Witt, Victor Perevoztchikov, Maxim Potekhin

Requested: Olga, Manuel, Alex, Jamie, Maxim
Purpose: Review of all HF requests, current opened questions, priorities, policies, comunication channel understanding, opened questions.

Attendee: Jamie, Manuel, Maxim, Alex (Olga could not attend due topersonal matters)

The meeting started with a general procedure reminder as per the communication level between the embedding team and the PWGC /PWG. The general current (implicit) understanding is that the process will follow the steps as described:

• A PA makes a request within the PWG, the PA is approved by the PWGC to move along with making a formal request
• The Web interface is used to make a request. The PA is the contact person.
  • Note: The requests may be prioritized by the PAC or S&C leader depending on (respectively) physics priorities or technical feasibilities and optimization.
• Upon submission, the request is inspected by the embedding team.
  • Precision may be requested to the PA
  • The request is modified until it become comprehensive
• A sample is produced – QA is requested
• Feedback is provided, the full request is scheduled

Several area may need reshape as per the procedure.

1. The request page is ambiguous – an effort was started to reshape the interface (view [node:3206] for more information, tasks 49 to 51)
2. The communication is ambiguous
   1. often one Email is sent and no reminders (easer side) and no pro-active checks for follow-ups.
   2. S&C meeting status overview is generally not attended by PWG representatives.

As follow-ups of this discussion:

• The requirements for a new embedding request form will be sent to all PWG - We expect from the PWG a pro-active look at it and feedback what in the past was clear/not clear and what the requirements do address/do not address
• We assume that the new interface will allow later to send automated reminders to the PA via cron. A db back-end will be needed (implementation detail).
• We propose that the embedding coordinator would pro-actively send reminder (or delegate tasks to the embedding team consistent with moving the tasks along faster).
• We will assume that the PWGC are prime responsible for ensuring the requests are answered from the PWG side.

We discussed the requests from the PWGC as per what is on [node:3987] (comment 127). We inspected the first 9 requests keeping in mind the suggestions made as comment 126. The following was agreed upon:

• Request 7, 1154003633 is more trigger problematic and may need to be addressed at a later time embedding wise and will be put on hold.
• Request 8, 1154004721 should have a related paper coming out soon. We will keep it in.
• Requests 1 and 2 should be the highest priorities

Procedure and action items:

• An embedding request is best submitted related to an ongoing/incomplete analysis. PWG should proceed with a simulation request (much simpler and not requiring another dimension of data/mixed with simulation and hence, confusion with chain, timestamp etc...) and then move to embedding for semi-final results.
• The Vertex options VFMCE and VFFV aimed to consolidate the embedding framework.
  • VFFV: use a default vertex at (0,0,0) but is envisioned to be used to set the vertex to whatever appropriate value taken from an extrenal knowledge. Especially, the method StFixedVertexFinder::SetVertexPosition() - Possible use of this relates to the (hopefully) old way of doing embedding when an external file contains vertex information. This option could be used to set “a” vertex event by event.
    Method was implemented by Lee Barnby upon requirement request from the S&C project in May 2006.
  • VFMCE: This option was added to replace the StEvent vertex by the Monte-Carlo vertex. The implementation simply overwrites the vertex.
    Method was implemented by Jerome Lauret & Lee Barnby May 2006.
    Sti vertex constraint was fixed by Victor Perevoztchikov – Beware that the default vertex errors are 1 microns in all directions if set to null.

While we believe the vertex issue is very secondary to Xiaoyan's analysis, it was agreed that the vertex finder to be used is VFMCE, dropping any vertex from the data event and using the Monte Carlo vertex. This will be the case for all Cu+Cu and p+p embedding requests including 2006 data.
The code for FVMCE need backward propagation pending a bug tracking report to be submitted by Andrew Rose (chain and input file needed to debug).