CMS Configuration Editor: GUI based application for user analysis job definition

We present the user interface and the software architecture of the Configuration Editor that is used by CMS physicists to configure their physics analysis tasks. Analysis workflows typically involve execution of a sequence of algorithms, and these are implemented as software modules that are integrated within the CMS software framework (CMSSW). In particular, a set of common analysis tools is provided in the so-called CMS Physics Analysis Toolkit (PAT) and these need to be steered and configured during the execution of an analysis job. The Python scripting language is used to define the job configuration that drives the analysis workflow. Configuring analysis jobs can be quite a challenging task, particularly for newcomers, and therefore a graphical tool, called the Configuration Editor, has been developed to facilitate the creation and inspection of these configuration files. Typically, a user-defined analysis workflow can be produced starting from a standard configuration file, applying and configuring PAT tools according to specific user requirements. CMS physicists can visualize the structure of their configuration, look at the modules included in the workflow, inspect the dependences existing among the modules and check the data flow. They can visualize at which values parameters are set and change them according to what is required by their analysis task. The integration of common tools in the GUI necessitated adoption of an Object Oriented structure in the Python definition of the PAT tools and the definition of a layer of abstraction from which all PAT tools inherit.