Glossary

A collaborative development environment (CDE) is an online meeting space where a software development project's stakeholders can work together, no matter what timezone or region they are in, to discuss, document, and produce project deliverables. The name was coined by Grady Booch.

A Consistent Physical Object (CPO) is a physics based, hierarchical data structure employed by the ITM-TF for a complete description of a physics area, e.g. equilibrium. All ITM-TF code modules interact through the exchange of CPOs. The CPOs also form the basic block of data written to the ITM database.

A content management system (CMS) is the collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to:

• Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
• Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit
• Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
• Reduce repetitive duplicate input
• Improve the ease of report writing
• Improve communication between users

In a CMS, data can be defined as nearly anything - documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, etc. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation.

FC2K is a tool for wrapping a Fortran or C++ source code into a Kepler actor. Before using it, your physics code should be ITM-compliant (i.e. use CPOs as input/output).

Gforge hosts all projects (software and infrastructure) under the ITM-TF.

The ITM Gateway is a compute cluster located at Portici (near Napoli in Italy). It is uses for development and fusion simulations in the ITM-TF.

The ITM Portal is the web portal for the ITM-TF, i.e. it hosts the ITM-TF web pages and projects under Gforge.

The Integrated Simulation Editor ISE allows you to visualize and edit data from an ITM database entry. It also allows running a Kepler workflow based on the opened data entry.

The UAL (Universal Access Layer) is a multi-language library that allows exchanging Consistent Physical Objects (CPOs) between various modules, and to write to an ITM database.

Actors take execution instructions from a director. In other words, actors specify what processing occurs while the director specifies when it occurs.
In the ITM-TF, actors are usually modules which contain physics codes like EQUAL or HELENA.

The process of adjusting numerical or physical modelling parameters in the computational model for the purpose of improving agreement with experimental data.

An XML file containing all the mapping essentials for mapping from a local experimental database for a specific tokamak device to the ITM database. The mapping essentials include for instance the download method, local signal names, gains and offsets, time base, and eventual interpolation option to ensure that only one time base is set for each CPO that is built from multiple local signals. A java code (exp2ITM developed under ISIP), with the MD and DM files as inputs, is then run to connect to the local device database, retrieve the required experimental data and populate the ITM database instance for that shot/device and dataversion.

A director controls (or directs) the execution of a workflow, just as a film director oversees a cast and crew.

A recognisable deficiency in any phase or activity of modelling and simulation that is not due to lack of knowledge.

Kepler is a software application for the analysis and modeling of scientific data. Kepler simplifies the effort required to create executable models by using a visual representation of these processes. These representations, or "scientific workflows", display the flow of data among discrete analysis and modeling components.

The machine description (MD) of a device basically builds on the set of engineering and diagnostic settings characterising a tokamak device. This includes, for instance, the vessel/limiter description, the PF coils and circuiting and lines of sight of diagnostics. In practice, all MD information is encapsulated in an XML file that emanates from the MD tagged datastructure schemas. An MD instance of a given device is then stored into the ITM database as shot 0 for that device database.

A representation of a physical system or process intended to enhance our ability to understand, predict, or control its behaviour.

• A conceptual model consists of the observations, mathematical modelling data, and mathematical (e.g., partial differential) equations that describe the physical system. It will also include initial and boundary conditions.
• The computational model is the computer program or code that implements the conceptual model. It includes the algorithms and iterative strategies. Parameters for the computational model include the number of grid points, algorithm inputs, and similar parameters, etc.

The process of construction or modification of a model

Use of a model to foretell the state of a physical system under conditions for which the model has not been validated.

The exercise or use of a model.

A potential deficiency in any phase or activity of the modelling process that is due to the lack of knowledge.

The process of determining the degree to which a model is an accurate representation of the real world from the perspective of the intended uses of the model.

The process of determining that a model implementation accurately represents the developer's conceptual description of the model and the solution to the model.