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10.10.2005 ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)
Visual DCT’s Latest Hits
Jaka Bobnar ([email protected]),Matej Sekoranja, Igor Verstovsek
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Work in part funded by: Diamond (DLS)
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EPICS
• Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System
• requires specific configuration files:– record instance database files– additional EPICS extensions
configuration files• configuration files are text-based
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What is Visual DCT?
• Visual Database Configuration Tool for EPICS
• Written in Java– Platform
independent– Webstart support
• Open-source product
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Why using VisualDCT
• Talks 100% EPICS– no additional files– preserves order,
comments
• Hierarchical support• Standard IDE
features– clipboard, undo– object inspector, visual
linking
• Plug-ins– freely extensible
• Easy and fun to use
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Latest features
• Visual and functionality improvements:– zoom– printing– visual cues for different actions– improved building– bugfixes, etc.
• Plug-ins:– See next slides
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Alarm Handler Configuration Plug-in (1)
• Alarm Handler displays EPICS alarm status• Uses text based configurations files
– difficult to maintain if database is large– hierarchical or flat
Solution: a generic tool, which generates configurations files
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Alarm Handler Configuration Plug-in (2)
• Record names are imported from VisualDCT template
• Displays the file structure as a tree
• Edit the tree to change values of properties
• Drag&Drop supported• Automatic file
consistency checking
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Channel Archiver Configuration Plug-in
• Channel Archiver is an archiving toolset for EPICS
• Requires xml configuration file
• Hard to maintain if database is large
• Includes all Alarm Handler plug-in features
Future plans:– include possibility to
use a substitutions file
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Spreadsheet View and Editor
• Graphical representation is useless when database is large
• A new view was proposed – spreadsheet style
• Records presented in an editable table
• Enables editing multiple records simultaneously
• Easy database error tracking
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Substitutions File Editor
• EPICS database mechanism requires two input file:
• .template• .substitutions
• Substitutions files with many macros are hard to maintain as a text file
• Plug-in will offer syntax checks of the substitutions files
• Large amount of macros will be easier to control
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Conclusions
• EPICS gained a powerful database development tool
• Editing databases can be fun
• VisualDCT will be supported in the future and will follow EPICS changes– Work in progress with Nick Rees
• Check out: http://visualdct.cosylab.com
