Wanted: A tool to 'warn' user of inefficient (for I/O) construct in data model

(5 January 2016)

A tool to ‘warn’ user of inefficient (for I/O) construct in data model

ROOT includes a extensive, flexible, and performant framework to automatically serialize C++ objects into a platform independent binary format. One the major strength of this framework is the ability to support almost all C++ constructs. The downside of this flexibility is that the user has the choice can select for a very wide ranges of constructs and schemas which have very different I/O performance characteristics. Some of the recommendations for design an I/O efficient data schema are straightforward, for example it is better to use a sorted vector of pair than a map, and some are much more complex, like the effect of deeper class hierarchy or the order of data members. Creating a tool that can analyze a given data model and give clear recommendation on how to improve its performance would be very beneficial and improve the productivity of data model designers.

Expected Results

• Implement prototype scanning a user data model and giving simple recommendation.
• Review and expand the list of recommendation to improve I/O efficiency.

Requirements

Strong C++ skills, knowledge in the field of Physics and HEP computation and/or experience with ROOT are certainly a plus.