Crystallography Online: the website of the International Union of Crystallography

Dear fellow small angle scatterers,

We are writing to ask for your help in developing a next generation SANS 
software package.  We aim to develop an integrated platform and toolset 
for SANS data analysis that will provide users at current and next 
generation facilities with the advanced analysis and modeling capabilities 
required to drive the development of their science.  We've set up a web 
based poll to help us clarify some of the needs and priorities.  This poll 
can be accessed at:  http://danse.cacr.caltech.edu/polls/survey.php?sid=21
This should take less than 10 minutes to complete and we'd very much 
appreciate your input.  Of course direct email correspondence is also 
welcome - please send comments to butler at nist.gov, and feel free to pass 
this along to anyone who may be interested.  More information on the DANSE 
project itself (of which this SANS project is a sub project) can be 
obtained at: http://wiki.cacr.caltech.edu/danse/index.php/Main_Page

For those who would like more information here we provide the following:

With three major neutron scattering facility projects currently under way 
on three continents (SNS in the US, the second target station at ISIS, and 
J-Park, the Japanese SNS) an unprecedented opportunity for major software 
collaboration exists.   To harness that opportunity the three major 
projects have formed a loose consortium called NeSSI (Neutron Scattering 
Software Initiative) with significant contributions from other established 
sources such as IPNS, NIST, HFIR, LANSCE, PSI etc.  This group is 
establishing consensus, defining basic standards and frameworks, and 
identifying point people and teams for all software related issues at the 
facilities.  Among other things, NeSSI participants are adopting the NeXus 
standard for neutron and X-ray scattering data formats being defined by 
the international NeXus committee, making the facility at which the data 
were taken transparent to the analysis software.   Within this context, 
DANSE (Distributed data Analysis for Neutron Scattering Experiments) is an 
independent project led out of Caltech to provide a new framework for all 
neutron scattering instruments at SNS and extensible to any facility.  As 
such it must conform to the SNS requirements documents and NeSSI standards 
and agreements.  In return it is expected that analysis efforts at other 
NeSSI facilities will be able to integrate to some extent with DANSE.  The 
DANSE framework attempts to harness the latest computer technologies to 
provide state of the art software analysis tools.   DANSE is composed of a 
core services effort and five instrument specific sub-efforts in the areas 
of inelastic scattering, SANS, diffraction, reflectivity, and engineering 
diffraction


Thanks again for your help

Paul Butler
Dean Myles
Sean Langridge