Using the web interface
The GraceDB web interface is intended primarily for “read” operations (i.e., searching for and viewing events), whereas the REST interface (discussed in Using the API) is used for both “read” and “write” operations. Thus, new events are ordinarily created via the REST interface, but viewed with the web interface. This section focuses on the latter.
Searching for events and superevents
The search form can be found by clicking on “SEARCH” in the top navigation menu. Use the dropdown menu to select whether you want to search for events or superevents and enter your search criteria in the text box.
There are a variety of different attributes which can be used to search for events or superevents. Click on the “Query help” link below the “Search” button for a list of attributes and examples.
Latest events and superevents
The “LATEST” page shows the most recent events or superevents (by submission time). Users can also do searches from this page, however only a limited number (currently 25) of the most recent events will be displayed.
Understanding the event detail page
Clicking on an event in the search results table leads to an individual event page. These pages are broken up into several sections (in order from top to bottom):
Basic info: Attributes that are common to all event types, including the graceid (UID), group, pipeline, and search. A link to the associated data files is also found here.
Pipeline-specific attributes: Tables of attributes associated with a specific search pipeline (e.g., the chirp mass for a CBC event, or the central frequency for a burst event)
Neighbors: Surrounding events within a specified time window. (Note that the time window is adjustable by clicking on it.) These events are neighbors in the temporal sense only (i.e., not spatial).
Event log messages: This is the largest section, consisting of annotations broken up into thematic sections that may be collapsed and expanded.
At the bottom of the Event Log Messages section, there is a pane entitled “Full Event Log” which (when expanded) shows all of the annotations in reverse chronological order. These individual entries are sometimes tagged as belonging to a particular category, and these tags are used to group entries into the thematic sections above. Each entry in the full event log has a log message number, creation time, and user name to establish provenance. The existing tags are also shown in the same column as the message itself, as is the form (which looks like a +) to add a new tag. Users are free to create new tags for their own purposes (e.g., searching through annotations at some later date), but only a pre-determined list of tags is used to create title pane sections.
Understanding the superevent detail page
The detail page for a superevent can be accessed similarly to an event page. The content is analogous to that shown on the event page, although it contains information about the superevent in general, as well as a table summarizing the information about the superevent’s preferred event. Additional tables show preferred events by pipeline and a summary of the superevent’s constituent event uploads.