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ROOT

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For other uses of "root", see root (disambiguation).
ROOT
Developer(s)CERN
Stable release
5.11 / April 19, 2006
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
LicenseLGPL
WebsiteROOT home page

ROOT is an object-oriented software package developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also commonly used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining.

Description

It was initiated by René Brun and Fons Rademakers in 1994. ROOT is written in C++, and published under the LGPL. It provides platform independent access to a computer's graphics subsystem and Operating System using abstract layers. Parts of the abstract platform are: a graphical user interface, container classes, reflection, a C++ script and command line interpreter (CINT), object serialization and persistence.

The packages provided by ROOT include those for

A key feature of ROOT is a data container called tree, with its substructures branches and leaves. A tree can be seen as a sliding window to the raw data, as stored in a file. Data from the next entry in the file can be retrieved by advancing the index in the tree. This avoids memory allocation issues associated with object creation, and allows the tree to act as a lightweight container while handling buffering invisibly.

ROOT's focus on performance is caused by the amount of data that the Large Hadron Collider's experiments will collect, estimated to several petabytes per year. Physicists are expected to analyze this data using ROOT. ROOT is currently mainly used in data analysis and data acquisition in high energy physics experiments — most current experimental plots and results are obtained using ROOT.

Criticisms

ROOT has been criticised by some, claiming it has a monolithic design, a tendency to re-invent existing technologies, a too strong reliance on the CINT interpreter, and poor use of object-oriented programming methods, including OO antipatterns [1]. In attempting to provide all the functionality required by any data analysis task through a single interface, ROOT has attracted "no silver bullet" criticisms. Many of ROOT's fundamental design elements, such as global state, STL-incompatibility and aggressive single-owner based memory management, can make integration of ROOT functionality with stand-alone code difficult.

However, ROOT undoubtedly has a large user community which on the whole has little issue with these defects, or at least considers their solution secondary to more immediate problems of data analysis. From time to time, issues of ROOT's design and implementation are discussed on the ROOT users mailing list [2] [3].

Application of ROOT

Several particle physics experiments have written software based on ROOT, often in favor of using more generic solutions (i.e. using ROOT containers instead of STL). The exact meaning of "generic" here is unclear: obviously it is not in the sense of "generic programming" which makes significant use of compile-time abstractions, often via C++ templates.

  • Future particle physics experiments currently developing software based on ROOT
  • Other physics projects using ROOT

See also

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