Integration of Mathematica in the Large Hadron Collider Database

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the major project in particle physics in the world. The particle accelerator is a 27 km ring where many thousands of superconducting magnets keep protons on track. Results from complex measurements of, for example, the magnetic field and the geometry of the main bending and focusing magnets are stored in databases for analysis and quality control. The geometry of the 15 m long main bending magnet weighing almost 30 tons has to be controlled within tenths of mm. All measurements are stored in ORACLE data bases. They are organized in two types: raw and derived data. Raw data come from the measurement devices and derived data describe quality measures calculated from the raw measurements. For example, the transverse position of the beam tube center relative to the theoretical axis of the accelerator is measured along the magnet. This data is used to simulate improvements or to calculate quality criteria, used in the daily quality checks of all produced magnets. The positions of the corrector magnets housed inside the magnet assembly are measured in industry before the closing of the magnet cold mass; they have to be calculated from reference points on the outside of the cold mass one measured after delivery to CERN. The results from these calculations are re-injected into the data base for easy access. The calculations cannot be performed by the ORACLE query language. There comes the interest of Mathematica, which is easy to interface with the existing ORACLE and Java environment. Maintenance and improvements of calculations are comfortable due to Mathematica's explicit functional language.