A Dynamic Test Management Framework for the ATLAS Experiment

The ATLAS experiment explores the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Its Data Acquisition (DAQ) is a large distributed and inhomogeneous system: it consists of thousands of interconnected computers and electronics devices that operate coherently to readout and select the relevant Physics data. In order to verify the functioning of the DAQ and to diagnose any problems we have developed a flexible test management system that allows the experts to define and configure tests for different components, indicate follow-up actions to test failures and describe inter-dependencies between DAQ elements. This development is based on the experience gained with the previous test system that has been used during the first three years of data taking, that showed that more emphasis needed to be put on the flexibility and configurability of the verification and diagnostics functionality by the many people that are ,each, knowledgeable and expert on individual components of the DAQ. In this paper we will describe the design and implementation of the test management system and make an assessment of its performance and potential for the next phase of data taking of the experiment that will start in 2015.