Data Quality Monitoring Framework for the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC

Data Quality Monitoring (DQM) is an important and integral part of the data taking process of HEP experiments. DQM involves analysis of various monitoring data through user defined algorithms and relaying the summary of the analysis results while data is being processed. This approach is used in both online and offline environments of the experiment.When DQM occurs in the online environment it provides the shifter with live information about the run which can be used to overcome problems early on and help avoid taking faulty data. During the offline reconstruction more complex analysis of physics quantities are performed by DQM and the results are used to assess the quality of the reconstructed data. The ATLAS Data Quality Monitoring Framework (DQMF) is the software providing Data Quality Monitoring functionality in the online environment. The core part of the DQMF is designed to only have dependence on software which is common between online and offline (such as ROOT) and can therefore be used for the offline data quality assessment. This paper describes the main requirements, the architectural design and the first implementation of the DQMF.