[NEST Users] Enhancement of C++ implementation of DumpLayerConnections()

Hi! After using some PyNEST functions and modifying the C++ implementation of DumpLayerConnections(), I was thinking on a possible further improvement of this function (or creating a new function). But since I do not know the design and architecture of C++ nestkernel code, I prefer to ask. In my code I normalize the presynaptic connections of every neuron. To do this, I originally do something like for i in range(len(target_layer)) conn[i] = nest.GetConnections(source_layer, target_layer, synapse_model) normalize(conn) Since I am using MPI and the loop iterates over all the neurons, I modified the previous code to local_nodes = nest.GetLocalNodeCollection(target_layer) local_nodes = nest.NodeCollection(local_nodes) for i in range(len(local_nodes)) conn[i] = nest.GetConnections(source_layer, local_nodes, synapse_model) normalize(conn) This last code is faster that the previous one (I guess that local_nodes variable is local to every MPI process and, as a consequence, GetConnections() is more efficient because it only works with local nodes instead of with all of them). Using the idea of the GetLocalNodeCollection(), I was thinking it could be used into the C++ implementation of DumpLayerConnections(). Presently, this function obtain all the connections between source and target layers. Could it be possible to call the equivalent C++ implementation of GetLocalCollection()? I understand that the problem is that, since DumpLayerConnections() needs the spatial information of the layers, the node collections obtained with GetLocalNodeCollection() (I guess similarly its C++ implementation) does not have this spatial information. As a second possibility, I was thinking on adding a new method (GetSpatialInformation()) and enhancing DumpLayerConnections() (or add a new function). The GetSpatialInformation() function could return the spatial information of a collection of nodes (the ones obtained by GetLocalNodeCollection() ). The DumpLayerConnections() (or a new function) could be enhanced by changing the target layer parameter to a pair of parameters that contain the local nodes collection and their spatial information. Something like DumpLaterConnections(source_layer, local_nodes_collection, spatial_information, synapse_model). This way DumpLayerConnections() will only used local nodes and would be much faster. Sorry for the technical email. Xavier