PCaPAC2014 - Table of Session: TCO1 (Software Management)

Paper

Title

Page

Benefits, Drawbacks and Challenges During a Collaborative Development of a Settings Management System for CERN and GSI

126

R. Müller, J. Fitzek, H.C. Hüther
GSI, Darmstadt, Germany
G. Kruk
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The settings management system LSA (LHC Software Architecture) was originally developed for the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). For FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) a renovation of the GSI control system was necessary. When it was decided in 2008 to use the LSA system for settings management for FAIR, the middle management of the two institutes agreed on a collaborative development. This paper highlights the insights gained during the collaboration, from three different perspectives: organizational aspects of the collaboration, like roles that have been established, planned procedures, the preparation of a formal contract and social aspects to keep people working as a team across institutes. It also shows technical benefits and drawbacks that arise from the collaboration for both institutes as well as challenges that are encountered during development. Furthermore, it provides an insight into aspects of the collaboration which were easy to establish and which still take time.

Slides TCO101 [0.728 MB]

TCO102

Eplanner Software for Machine Activities Management

129

B.S.K. Srivastava, R.K. Agrawal
RRCAT, Indore (M.P.), India
P. Fatnani
Raja Ramanna Centre For Advanced Technology, Indore, India

For Indus-2, a 2.5 GeV Synchrotron Radiation Source, operational at Indore, India, the need was felt for software for easily managing various related activities for avoiding communication gaps among the crew members and clearly bringing out the important communications for machine operation. Typical requirements were to have the facility to enter and display daily, weekly and longer operational calendars, to convey system specific and machine operation related standing instructions, to log and track the faults occurring during the operations and follow up actions on the faults logged etc. Overall, the need was for a system to easily manage the number of jobs related to planning the day to day operations of a national facility. The paper describes such a web based system developed and in use regular use and found extremely useful.

Slides TCO102 [5.439 MB]

TCO103

Recent Highlights from Cosylab

132

M. Pleško, F. Amand
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Cosylab was established 13 years ago by a group of regular visitors of the PCaPAC. In the meantime, it has grown to a company of 90 employees that covers the majority of accelerator control projects. In this talk, I will present the most interesting developments that we have done in the past two years on a very different range of projects and I will show how we had to get organized in order to be able to manage them all. The developments were made for labs like KIT, ITER, PSI, EBG-MedAustron, European Spallation Source, Maxlab, SLAC, ORNL, GSI/FAIR but also generally for community software like EPICS, TANGO, Control System Studio, White Rabbit, etc. And they range from electronics development to high level software: electric signal conditioning and interfacing, timing system, machine protection system, fibre-optic communication, linux driver development, core EPICS development, packaging, high performance networks, medical device integration, database development, all the way up to turnkey systems. Efficient organisation comprises a matrix structure of teams and groups versus projects and accounts, supported by rigorous reporting, measurements and drill-down analyses.

Slides TCO103 [13.372 MB]

Paper	Title	Page
TCO101	Benefits, Drawbacks and Challenges During a Collaborative Development of a Settings Management System for CERN and GSI	126
	R. Müller, J. Fitzek, H.C. Hüther GSI, Darmstadt, Germany G. Kruk CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The settings management system LSA (LHC Software Architecture) was originally developed for the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). For FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) a renovation of the GSI control system was necessary. When it was decided in 2008 to use the LSA system for settings management for FAIR, the middle management of the two institutes agreed on a collaborative development. This paper highlights the insights gained during the collaboration, from three different perspectives: organizational aspects of the collaboration, like roles that have been established, planned procedures, the preparation of a formal contract and social aspects to keep people working as a team across institutes. It also shows technical benefits and drawbacks that arise from the collaboration for both institutes as well as challenges that are encountered during development. Furthermore, it provides an insight into aspects of the collaboration which were easy to establish and which still take time.
	Slides TCO101 [0.728 MB]

TCO102	Eplanner Software for Machine Activities Management	129
	B.S.K. Srivastava, R.K. Agrawal RRCAT, Indore (M.P.), India P. Fatnani Raja Ramanna Centre For Advanced Technology, Indore, India
	For Indus-2, a 2.5 GeV Synchrotron Radiation Source, operational at Indore, India, the need was felt for software for easily managing various related activities for avoiding communication gaps among the crew members and clearly bringing out the important communications for machine operation. Typical requirements were to have the facility to enter and display daily, weekly and longer operational calendars, to convey system specific and machine operation related standing instructions, to log and track the faults occurring during the operations and follow up actions on the faults logged etc. Overall, the need was for a system to easily manage the number of jobs related to planning the day to day operations of a national facility. The paper describes such a web based system developed and in use regular use and found extremely useful.
	Slides TCO102 [5.439 MB]

TCO103	Recent Highlights from Cosylab	132
	M. Pleško, F. Amand Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
	Cosylab was established 13 years ago by a group of regular visitors of the PCaPAC. In the meantime, it has grown to a company of 90 employees that covers the majority of accelerator control projects. In this talk, I will present the most interesting developments that we have done in the past two years on a very different range of projects and I will show how we had to get organized in order to be able to manage them all. The developments were made for labs like KIT, ITER, PSI, EBG-MedAustron, European Spallation Source, Maxlab, SLAC, ORNL, GSI/FAIR but also generally for community software like EPICS, TANGO, Control System Studio, White Rabbit, etc. And they range from electronics development to high level software: electric signal conditioning and interfacing, timing system, machine protection system, fibre-optic communication, linux driver development, core EPICS development, packaging, high performance networks, medical device integration, database development, all the way up to turnkey systems. Efficient organisation comprises a matrix structure of teams and groups versus projects and accounts, supported by rigorous reporting, measurements and drill-down analyses.
	Slides TCO103 [13.372 MB]