This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science under Cooperative Agreement DE-SC0000661.Michigan State University designs and establishes FRIB as a DOE Office of Science National User Facility in support of the mission of the Office of Nuclear Physics.

Robert Gaul

Eric Berryman

Kunal Shroff

Client Technologies

Goals Technologies

• Control System Studio• Web Applications• APIs• XAL

Overview

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 2

Determine if the tools currently in use are the correct tools for the job• If not… then what are?

Standardize the chosen client-side tools between collaborators

Goals

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 3

Currently using CSS for OPI screens and a handful of plugins (DataBrowser, Logbook)

Pros• Having a standard suite of tools readily available• Interconnectivity between plugins

Cons• Performance issues due to CSS being built on top of Eclipse• Steep learning curve for plugin development (easy to develop OPI screens

though)

Need to leverage CSS expert knowledge

In Use - Control System Studio

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 4

In Use - Control System Studio [2]

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 5

CakePHP• Pros»Resources are available within various FRIB/NSCL departments»PHP code can get very messy, this framework cleans things up a lot

• Cons»Not the most friendly framework when using a web service as its data source»Workarounds can lead to bloated code

Google Widget Toolkit• Pros»Lots of ready to use widgets»Friendly with web services

• Cons»Poor GUI development tools (GWT Designer)»No support for things such as multi-page web sites

Perhaps a java based framework would integrate easier in the larger picture of applications/services?

In Use – Web Applications

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 6

A special thanks to Mengxuan Zhao for GWT information

In Use – Web Applications [2]

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 7

In Use –APIs

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 8

Each service we develop will also have an API associated with it• Java• Python• PHP• Others as requirements are defined

Pros• APIs can be thrown into applications for immediate use• A better interface for test driven development

Cons• A lot more initial overhead• Integration concerns

XAL

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 9

Physics modeling and computation front-end Pros

• Not tied to an IDE (such as Eclipse)• Easy to use for physicists

Cons• No interconnectivity between instances• Performance issues

Take advantage of the underlying data structures, models, and computational tools but use CSS as the front-end

* A special thanks to Paul Chu for the information on this slide

Come to an agreement• Is what we have a good solution? What is the better route to go?

Discuss the chosen technologies thoroughly with programmers to hash out the technical details

Next Steps

R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 10