A RESTful Web service interface to the ATLAS COOL database

The COOL database in ATLAS is primarily used for storing detector conditions data, but also status flags which are uploaded summaries of information to indicate the detector reliability during a run. This paper introduces the use of CherryPy, a Python application server which acts as an intermediate layer between a web interface and the database, providing a simple means of storing to and retrieving from the COOL database which has found use in many web applications. The software layer is designed to be RESTful, implementing the common CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) database methods by means of interpreting the HTTP method (POST, GET, PUT, DELETE) on the server along with a URL identifying the database resource to be operated on. The format of the data (text, xml etc) is also determined by the HTTP protocol. The details of this layer are described along with a popular application demonstrating its use, the ATLAS run list web page. Tag this article Full text PDF (1.67 MB)