Physics analysis in the NA49 experiment using ROOT

The NA49 experiment studies collisions of heavy nuclei at the CERN SPS. In terms of data rate (16 Mbyte/s) and total yearly data volume (15 Tbyte), NA49 is facing challenges already today that will be a commonplace at future colliders like RHIC and LHC. To allow a fast, interactive analysis of the NA49 data, the development of the object-oriented ROOT analysis framework was started within the NA49 collaboration. The system has been used for physics analysis for more than a year. In this paper we will summarize our experience so far and outline our plans for the near future.