Toolchain tagging

A toolchain is an arbitrarily large list of versioned software together with actual copies of their parameter settings files. It should be specific enough to allow fully scripted reconstruction of the whole chain's workflow.

An central interactive system which

• assigns a unique, unchangeable tag for a submitted toolchain, and
• allows retrieval of the toolchain from that tag.

or

• decentral user-specific hashing - problem: retrieval of hashed chain

necessary features:

• a tag for a shorter toolchain can stand as an abbreviation of one part of a longer chain
  • User A uses a LHE input file with tag XYZ, generated earlier by someone else. Without needing to know the actual sequence of tools represented by XYZ, a new tag can be generated for the extended workflow.

possible uses:

• unique identification of reproducible workflows
• inclusion in LHE header blocks, can substitute for explicit parameter listings
• inclusion in Model database, to refer uniquely to
  • a given model-card/tool combination
  • the workflows that have created the validation plots/tables
• Anywhere that a detailed specification of a set of tools and inputs is required

questions / answers

• All chains starting with mSUGRA
• "which tags contain Herwig-2.4.2 ?"
• Given Spires ID of experimental paper, which chains were used in the paper