Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Carcassi, Gabriele" <[email protected]> · Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:55:17 +0000

Hi Alex:

At BNL and MSU we are putting together a web-socket based "application level gateway" that is supported as part of the same data layer that is in CS-Studio (i.e. pvmanager/diirt). The idea is to recycle all the work invested there and expose much of the same functionality to the web, but without the Eclipse RCP/RAP. Just a pure web application. (More or less like Xihui's webpda does)

The short version of the status is: there is something that works end-to-end; we need to start using it in production to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. But it's not at the point where you just follow some installation instruction and create web pages.

The long version is:
* the JSON serialization is essentially done
https://github.com/diirt/diirt/wiki/JSON-serialization-for-vTypes-v1
* the protocol is mostly done (need to close some minor details)
https://github.com/diirt/diirt/wiki/WebPods-Protocol-Specification-v1
* the client-side javascript API works, but we need to write a spec/doc for it and review
* we have some widget prototypes (essentially you write <div> section with class and extra attributes) but we need to look at  EDM/MEDM/BOY/CAML/... and write a fully thought out spec, instead of just dumping something that we later regret :-/
* security is something that is still not understood end-to-end (i.e. we understand how to secure the server, but don't understand how the client can actually use it; this has to do with details on how websockets are supported in web browsers; some people are suggesting using tokens...)
* no user documentation

I am hoping, by mid-December, to close the protocol/JSON/javascript client, at least for the unauthenticated part, and call it "developer preview". BNL is starting to use this to reproduce status screens (I think they are at the point that they have a server, and they need to install). But it's all contingent to what other emergencies distract the development. And what other resources appear/disappear.

The source code is at:
https://github.com/diirt/diirt/tree/master/pods/web-pods

The binary snapshots are at:
https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/org/diirt/web-pods/3.0.0-SNAPSHOT/
It's a war file that you can deploy in glassfish or any other J2EE container that supports websockets.

Gabriele

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System