As we near the collection of the first data from the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS collaboration is preparing the software and computing infrastructure to
allow quick analysis of the first data and support of the long-term steady-state
ATLAS physics program. As part of this effort considerable attention has been
payed to the "Analysis Model", a vision of the interplay of the software design,
computing constraints, and various physics requirements. An important input to this
activity has been the experience of Tevatron and B-Factory experiments. Recently,
much of the Analysis Model has focused on ensuring the ATLAS software framework supports the required manipulations of event data; the
event data design and content is consistent with foreseen calibration
and physics analysis tasks; the event data is optimized in size, access speed,
and is accessible both inside and outside the software framework; and that the analysis
software may be developed collaboratively.
