Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
We have developed a control system configuration tool, which provides an easy-to-use interface for quick configuration of the entire facility. It uses Microsoft Excel as the front-end application and allows the user to quickly generate and deploy IOC configuration (EPICS start-up scripts, alarms and archive configuration) onto IOCs; start, stop and restart IOCs, alarm servers and archive engines, and more. The DCDB tool utilizes a relational database, which stores information about all the elements of the accelerator. The communication between the client, database and IOCs is realized by a REST server written in Python. The key feature of the DCDB tool is that the user does not need to recompile the source code. It is achieved by using a dynamic library loader, which automatically loads and links device support libraries. The DCDB tool is compliant with CODAC (used at ITER and ELI-NP), but can also be used in any other EPICS environment (e.g. it has been customized to work at ESS).
