Enhancing data consistency in ATLAS and CERN HR databases through automated synchronization

As the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, CERN has more than 17000 collaborators spread around the globe. ATLAS, one of CERN’s experiments, has around 6000 active members and 300 associate institutes, all of which must go through the standard registration and updating procedures within CERN’s HR (Foundation) database. Simultaneously, the ATLAS Glance project, among other functions, also has the same goal within the ATLAS context. At the time of its first development, no tools were available to allow Glance to write into the Foundation database, therefore the solution put into place was to duplicate data. This however proved to be inefficient as the databases grew over time. Information had to be constantly updated manually by the ATLAS Secretariat to keep members and institutes data (such as names, employment information and authorship status) coherent between databases. Today, equipped with new tools, the Glance system is about to change its relationship with Foundation: a sole source of truth for the data shall be determined, removing the duplication of information. This includes automating a series of internal processes so the ATLAS secretariat need not to manually intervene to keep both databases synchronized. For this, a workflow had to be developed so that the previous manual work could be successfully replaced considering the multitude of possible actions by the Secretariat. The remodeling of the current structure of the database, along with the refactoring of the code, shall also be required to establish an easy communication between the two systems. Finally, a number of tools developed on Foundation’s side (such as SQL procedures and APIs) have to be put in place to enable the writing and reading between databases.