Data Management at the NSLS PXRR Beamlines

John M. Skinner, Brookhaven National Lab

Protein Crystallography experiments performed at the six PXRR NSLS beamlines are under control of CBASS, a multi-threaded Python-based system that interfaces with the user, synchronizes control of the appropriate hardware systems, and logs the experiments. Meta-data are recorded in PXDB, our experiment tracking relational database system. A web-based interface to PXDB provides straightforward access to the meta-data and associated HTML-based logs. The existing ADSC-style data-file headers contain all of the information required by processing programs, such as dna, Mosflm, and Labelit. Although imgCif might provide only small advantages to the PXRR operation, we recognize that a worldwide standard would provide a significant benefit to the PX community, and we intend to adopt it. We worry about acceptance of the standard by the hkl2000 data-reduction software.