The ROOT system provides a set of object oriented frameworks with all
the functionality needed to handle and analyze large amounts of data
in a very efficient way. Having the data defined as a set of objects,
specialized storage methods are used to get direct access to the
separate attributes of the selected objects, without having to touch
the bulk of the data. Included are histogramming methods in an
arbitrary number of dimensions, curve fitting, function evaluation,
minimization, graphics and visualization classes to allow the easy
setup of an analysis system that can query and process the data
interactively or in batch mode, as well as a general parallel
processing framework, PROOF, that can considerably speed up an
analysis.

Thanks to the built-in C++ interpreter cling, the command, the
scripting and the programming language are all C++. The interpreter
allows for fast prototyping of the macros since it removes the, time
consuming, compile/link cycle. It also provides a good environment to
learn C++. If more performance is needed the interactively developed
macros can be compiled using a C++ compiler via a machine independent
transparent compiler interface called ACliC.

The system has been designed in such a way that it can query its
databases in parallel on clusters of workstations or many-core
machines. ROOT is an open system that can be dynamically extended by
linking external libraries. This makes ROOT a premier platform on
which to build data acquisition, simulation and data analysis systems.