Paper detail

ROAn, a ROOT based Analysis Framework

The ROOT based Offline and Online Analysis (ROAn) framework was developed to perform data analysis on data from Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor (DePFET) detectors, a type of active pixel sensors developed at the MPI Halbleiterlabor (HLL). ROAn is highly flexible and extensible, thanks to ROOT's features like run-time type information and reflection. ROAn provides an analysis program which allows to perform configurable step-by-step analysis on arbitrary data, an associated suite of algorithms focused on DePFET data analysis, and a viewer program for displaying and processing online or offline detector data streams. The analysis program encapsulates the applied algorithms in objects called steps which produce analysis results. The dependency between results and thus the order of calculation is resolved automatically by the program. To optimize algorithms for studying detector effects, analysis parameters are often changed. Such changes of input parameters are detected in subsequent analysis runs and only the necessary recalculations are triggered. This saves time and simultaneously keeps the results consistent. The viewer program offers a configurable Graphical User Interface (GUI) and process chain, which allows the user to adapt the program to different tasks such as offline viewing of file data, online monitoring of running detector systems, or performing online data analysis (histogramming, calibration, etc.). Because of its modular design, ROAn can be extended easily, e.g. be adapted to new detector types and analysis processes.