The main purpose of the PHOBOS analysis framework PhAT is to provide the collaboration with common interfaces for all aspects of data handling, from raw data collected in the DAQ computers to online monitoring and signal processing to reconstruction and physics analysis. PhAT is written in C++ and based (and entirely dependend) on the ROOT class libraries. ROOT provides tools for persistent object I/O, container classes, graphics, histogramming and fitting. Perhaps most importantly it includes a C++ script interpreter that allows interactive handling of PhAT objects, rapid prototyping and development of flexible and powerful analysis scripts. In this document we'll try to introduce the most important concepts of PhAT from data objects to super modules and show how they are supposed to interact with each other.
This manual assumes some familiarity with C++ and ROOT. There are several web pages providing introductions to ROOT for various levels of C++ expertise. See