Cirami, R.

Paper	Title	Page
TUP101	ALMA Common Software (ACS), Status and Development	313
	G. Chiozzi, A. Caproni, B. Jeram, J. Schwarz, H. Sommer ESO, Garching bei Muenchen J. A. Avarias NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico R. Cirami INAF-OAT, Trieste A. Grimstrup University of Calgary, NW Calgary, Alberta A. A. Hoffstadt, J. S. Lopez UTFSM, Valparaíso M. Sekoranja Cosylab, Ljubljana N. Troncoso ALMA, Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago H. Yatagai NAOJ, Tokyo
	ACS provides the infrastructure for the software of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and other projects. Using CORBA middleware, ACS supports the development of component-based software, from high-level user interfaces down to the hardware device level. It hides the complexity of CORBA beneath an API that allows the application developer to focus on domain-specific programming. Although ACS, now at release 8, has been used operationally by the APEX radio telescope and at the ALMA Test Facility, the commissioning of ALMA in Chile brings major challenges: new hardware, remote operation and, most important, upscaling from 2 to 60+ antennas. Work now turns to scalability and improving the tools to simplify remote debugging. To further identify potential problems, the University of Eindhoven is formally analysing ACS. Meanwhile, new developments are underway, both to respond to newly identified needs of ALMA, and those of other projects planning to use ACS. Examples include the refactoring of the interface to the CORBA Notify Service, integration with the Data Distribution Service, generation of state machine code from abstract models and of Python binding classes from XML schema.
	Poster
THP092	The EVALSO Project: Software/Hardware Architecture and Remote Tests Results	853
	R. Cirami, I. Coretti, P. Di Marcantonio, M. Pucillo, A. Santin, P. Santin INAF-OAT, Trieste
	The EVALSO (Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-America Southern Observatories) project, funded by the European Community (EC), aims to create a physical infrastructure to efficiently connect the Latin-America Southern Astronomical Observatories (European Southern Observatory and Observatorio Cerro Armazones) to Europe. This infrastructure will be complementary to the international infrastructure already created in the last years with the EC support. A Virtual Presence (VP) system developed by the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Trieste (OAT) will provide the astronomers with the tools to perform and control an astronomical observation from the user's site. This will be obtained re-creating selected components of the observatory environment at a remote site in order to allow the remote astronomer to interact with the on-site operators. The main objective of this activity will be to produce a low-cost, scalable, hardware and software system to be installed, without excessive efforts, in any operative situation where a suitable connectivity can be achieved. This paper will focus on the VP sw/hw architecture and the results of the tests with remote sites.
	Poster