There were five basic points to be stated as a summary of the meeting and they follow in no particular order.

DATABASE ACCESS TOOLS

the small tokamak community is developing Internet based data acquisition and data management tools that will be tested during the JEs. The systems presented from IST and the Kurchatov Institute have been developed on their own and it was stated that they will be ready to be used and tested.

the technical ideas embodied in these data tools appear very valuable and should be compared to existing solutions that are presently used or are in development within the large tokamak community. Given this observation, it is clear that the two communities should get together and discuss their technical solutions and the functionality of their systems. It would seem to be a great waste of fusion community’s resources to duplicate development in these areas. Instead, if appropriate, a joint development should be very beneficial.

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

The third point is that the small tokamak community is developing new software-based remote participation (RP) tools for human interaction based on Internet based videoconferencing and instant messaging and these tools will be tested during the forthcoming JE. Although a significant number of scientists will converge at the physical location of the JE, an equally large number will try to participate remotely using these tools.

TESTING OF ON-GOING DEVELOPMENTS

The fourth point is that the technical ideas embodied in these RP tools are intriguing and would benefit from comparison to existing solutions. The existing no-fee solutions such as VRVS/EVO and Access Grid for Internet-based video and audio, Jabber for instant messaging, and the many commercial solutions for Internet-based videoconferencing are in extensive use within the worldwide fusion community. As stated above, comparison of the tools developed and tested within the small tokamak community would help avoid the potential for duplicate development of similar functionality.

NO DUPLICATION OF EFFORTS

The fifth point is that the security in the small tokamak community, with their wide-ranging membership, is a very difficult issue that includes concerns beyond technical. The interaction of site security with off-site activities has the ability at times to greatly restrict RP functionality. As such, these issues need to be dealt with early an often so as to insure the success of the JEs.

AUTENTICATION AND SECURITY

3.3 Unified Data AccessA Unified Data Access for fusion devices means that any user in any laboratory should only learn once how to retrieve data related with any experiment.

In order for users to always use the same methods to interact with data, a common layer must exist and be installed in every laboratory.

The connection between the layer and the data storage schema, named connector, must be developed for each association's needs and must be able to translate the queries sent by the layer into the database syntax.

The licensing of code and binary libraries developed inside the scientific community should be open-source based. This guarantees that the programs can evolve even if the original developers cease to contribute to the project.

All servers should be fully internationalised in at least English and the association's native language.

The adoption of a unified data interface as described in Section 3.3 by the small tokamak community has the ability to greatly expand the data analysis conducted during a JE.

3.4 On-line Data Processing

On a grander scale, grid computing could be used to bring WAN based computational power into the experimental data analysis pipeline. Although the potential is large, a certain existing infrastructure needs to be adopted as well as decisions on security (authentication and authorization)

3.5 Visualization and Analysis ToolsThe first priority concerning data analysis is to provide robust and complete libraries that users can easily integrate in their favourite analysis programs.

In a more advanced stage a powerful analysis tool, with the Unified Data Access natively integrated, should be developed. Due to time and human resources constraints, the analysis motor shouldn't be developed from the scratch. One of the most interesting kernels is SciLab, an open-source project with a very big community associated, which offers “a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications”. It already includes hundreds of mathematical functions, with the possibility to add interactively programs from various languages (for instance C, Fortran,…), sophisticated data structures (including lists, polynomials, rational functions, linear systems,...), an interpreter and several toolboxes.

3.6 Collaborative Control Room and Remote ExperimentsCollaborative Control Rooms and Remote Experiment Participation essentially do not require entirely new techniques or developments; they can be entirely implemented by combining in an appropriate way existing approaches that have already been used in other contexts.

That said, it has to be underlined that little use is actually being made of existing remote control room participation techniques in the small tokamak community.

Technical approaches should not drastically differ between “large” and “small” experiments; however it maybe possible, in smaller experiments, to be less rigid in the procedural aspects with out sacrificing security.

        Teleconferencing (audio and video)        Remote screen sharing        Some form of remote computer access Remote data access

3.7 Security

No general solution has been implemented widely in the large-experiment fusion community for the most important security aspect, namely authentication and authorisation, with the exception of the US FusionGrid and JET. Both approaches differ greatly and illustrate the difficulties that the security aspects create.

Any authentication/authorisation solution that will be introduced in the small-devices community should ideally be designed in such a way that it can be adapted to become interoperable with the still-to-be-defined A/A scheme or schemes that will be used in the ITER collaboration and as a consequence, most likely, in the worldwide fusion community.

Another issue that may need addressing, and for example has not been yet solved in the US FusionGrid, is that of role-based authorization; the need to assign different authorization levels to the same user based on changing roles.

It could be that the small-tokamak community can constitute a suitable environment for testing such schemes.

3.8 Network issuesSeveral network aspects may influence remote collaboration between the small fusion devices.

The capacity and stability of network connections at the sites varies greatly. Some RP services require high-throughput and constant-throughput network connections. This is in particular true for Video. Audio requires less bandwidth but can not tolerate “holes” in the connectivity. The network structures vary greatly. Some labs have their own networks, directly connected typically to their National Research Network, whereas others are part of other organisation’s networks, typically of University campus networks. In the latter case site security requirements and fusion-lab-specific security requirements may be in conflict. In particular in those cases where site security is very strict this may have a negative impact on the RP activities of the lab

Monitoring of network performance and integrity is a necessity when real-time communication is involved. In this context we have to consider the real-time requirements of teleconferencing and of remote control room participation. The need for dedicated monitoring of network connections at all fusion sites has been identified by EFDA and several continuous monitoring sites have been established.

Network security arrangements on the various lab networks vary greatly from practically none to multiple-layer citadel structures with each layer separate from the next by firewalls. Such differences in approach at different sites that are participating in RP activities have to be taken into account; in particular the indirect weakening of high-security sites by RP activities with low-security sites requires particular care.

The most striking observation from the discussions at the meeting was the development within the small tokamak community of several data management systems in isolation of those efforts, most noticeable MDSplus, within the large tokamak community. Although there are some aspects of remote participation where the two communities differ in their need it was not obvious from the meeting that the needs with respect to data management and data acquisition are greatly different. Therefore, it makes great sense for the respective experts in these areas to gather together and understand the work that they are performing and contemplating so that joint efforts, if appropriate, can be undertaken instead of working on separate yet similar goals.