AIDA (computing)
Abstract Interfaces for Data Analysis (AIDA) is a set of defined interfaces and formats for representing common data analysis objects. The project was instigated and is primarily used by researchers in high-energy particle physics. As of 2011, the projects seems dormant, with last "recent news" on the project homepage dating from 2005.
| Developer(s) | Researchers from CERN, LAL, SLAC |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.2.1
/ October 2003 |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | AIDA home page |
The goals of the AIDA project are to define abstract interfaces for common physics analysis objects, such as histograms, ntuples (or data trees), fitters, I/O etc. The importance of the interface concept is that a variety of different tools with different implementations can all support a uniform interface: this encourages modular design in data analysis packages and enables users to use their preferred implementation of a certain functionality without having to re-write existing code.
An additional benefit of AIDA is the specification of an XML representation format for data objects, which can be written and read by AIDA-compliant applications. AIDA implementations exist for C++ (OpenScientist), Java (Java Analysis Studio) and Python. Usage of AIDA interfaces can be found in the Geant4 examples.