Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] (Jeff Hill) · Thu, 16 Sep 1999 12:34:03 -0600

All,

Attached is a quick summary of all of the responses to the EPICS server tool
developers survey that I sent out last year. If your comments are missing
or you would like to change or add to your answer (or my summary of it),
then
please send an update.

Thanks for your responses, I would like to use them in a paper for ICALEPCS
(if you do not object).

Jeff

PS:
GDD documentation is on the WEB at APS and CA server documentation is on the
WEB at LANL (and also in the casdef.h header file).

______________________________________________
Jeffrey O. Hill         E-mail [email protected]
LANL MS H820            Voice  505 665 1831
Los Alamos NM 87545 USA FAX    505 665 5107

Application of the Server Library (server side tools):

	CCD Camera & Video Processing:
		LANL-LEDA (Joan Sage)
		APS-SRICAT (Brian Tieman)
		PSI (Miroslaw Dach) (under consideration)

	Motion Control:
		APS-SRICAT (Brian Tieman) (under consideration)

	Low Cost Interface to Serial IO:
		ORNL (John Sinclair)

	Gateway to Other Systems:
		MIT-BATES (Coles Sibley) (gateway to facility system) (under
consideration)
		SLAC-SPEAR (Harvey Rarback) (gateway to SPEAR)
		SLAC-PEPII (Stephanie Allison) (gateway to PEPII)
		MSU-NSCL (John A. Priller) (gateway to NSCL)
		DESY (Matthias Clausen) (gateway to DOOCS and other systems)
		KEKB (Noboru Yamamoto) (gateway to KEK LINAC control system)
		KECK (William Lupton) (gateway to command processor system)

	High Level Languages and 3rd Party Tools:
		tcl_tk (Guy Jennings)
		(Ned Arnold)(under consideration)
		IDL LANL-LEDA (Joan Sage)
		Labview LANL-LEDA (Kay Kasemir)

	Directory Service:
		DESY (Matthias Clausen)

	CA Proxy (Concentrator):
		ANL-APS
		SLAC
		BESSY
		LANL-LEDA
		KEK (under consideration)
		KECK (William Lupton) (under consideration)

	High Power RF Fault Log:
		LANL-LEDA (Joan Sage)

	Simulator:
		KECK (William Lupton) (under consideration)

	Modicon PLC:
		MSU-NSCL (John A. Priller) (under consideration)

Operating System:

	NT:
		APS-SRICAT (Brian Tieman)
		MSU-NSCL (John A. Priller)
		ORNL (John Sinclair)
		LANL-LEDA (Joan Sage)
		LANL-LEDA (Kay Kasemir)

	LINUX:
		APS (Guy Jennings)

	MAC-OS:
		APS (Guy Jennings)

	VMS:
		SLAC-SPEAR (Harvey Rarback)
		SLAC-PEPII (Stephanie Allison)

	HP-UX
		BESSY (Ralph Lange)
		KEKB (Noboru Yamamoto)

	Solaris
		KECK (William Lupton)
		DESY (Matthias Clausen)
		LANL-LEDA (Joan Sage)

Impression of the Software:

	bit to complex, but reliable - allows commercial software
		to be easily integrated:
		APS-SRICAT (Brian Tieman)

	high quality, general purpose, low effort
		ORNL (John Sinclair)

	dynamic type conversions possible in GDD rarely necessary,
		deletion policy for Server Objects is overly complex,
		would prefer a simple and light weight implementation
		(perhaps a C++ template process variable class),
		or abstract base class might be a good alternative to GDD
		APS (Guy Jennings)

	it was easy to implement a server side tool, but GDD is overly complex
		SLAC-PEPII (Stephanie Allison)

	reliable and efficient, GDD problems with large arrays has been fixed,
		bugs when asynchronous IO completes after client has disconnected
		(I think this has been fixed also - joh)
		KECK (William Lupton)

	nothing that we don't understand so far
		NMSU (Stephen Pate)

	inexpensive and low effort alternative
		MSU-NSCL (John A. Priller)

Impression of the Documentation:

	very helpful:
		APS (Guy Jennings)

	examples may be out of sync:
		MSU-NSCL (John A. Priller)

	good CAS documentation:
		SLAC-PEPII (Stephanie Allison)

	more documentation desired, but LANL WEB Documentation
		has not yet been consulted so far
		KECK (William Lupton)

Jeff

______________________________________________
Jeffrey O. Hill         E-mail [email protected]
LANL MS H820            Voice  505 665 1831
Los Alamos NM 87545 USA FAX    505 665 5107

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System