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Subsections

1 Introduction


1 Introduction to device server


Device servers were first developed at the European Synchrotron radiation Facility (ESRF) for controlling the 6 Gev synchrotron radiation source. This document is a Programmer's Manual on how to write TANGO device servers. It will not go into the details of the ESRF, nor its Control System nor any of the specific device servers in the Control System. The role of this document is to help programmers faced with the task of writing TANGO device servers.
Device servers have been developed at the ESRF in order to solve the main task of Control Systems viz provide read and write access to all devices in a distributed system. The problem of distributed device access is only part of the problem however. The other part of the problem is providing a programming framework for a large number of devices programmed by a large number of programmers each having different levels of experience and style.
Device servers have been written at the ESRF for a large variety of different devices. Devices vary from serial line devices to devices interfaced by field-bus to memory mapped VME cards or PC cards to entire data acquisition systems. The definition of a device depends very much on the user's requirements. In the simple case a device server can be used to hide the serial line protocol required to communicate with a device. For more complicated devices the device server can be used to hide the entire complexity of the device timing, configuration and acquisition cycle behind a set of high level commands.
In this manual the process of how to write TANGO client (applications) and device servers will be treated. The manual has been organized as follows : Throughout this manual examples of source code will be given in order to illustrate what is meant. Most examples have been taken from the StepperMotor class - a simulation of a stepper motor which illustrates how a typical device server for a stepper motor at the ESRF functions.

2 Device server history


The concept of using device servers to access devices was first proposed at the ESRF in 1989. It has been successfully used as the heart of the ESRF Control System for the institute accelerator complex. This Control System has been named TACO[*]. Then, it has been decided to also used TACO to control devices in the beam-lines. Today, more than 30 instances of TACO are running at the ESRF. The main technologies used within TACO are the leading technologies of the 80's. The Sun Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is used to communicate over the network between device server and applications, OS-9 is used on the front-end computers, C is the reference language to write device servers and clients and the device server framework follows the MIT Widget model. In 1999, a renewal of the control system was started. In June 2002, Soleil and ESRF offically decide to collaborate to develop this renewal of the old TACO control system. Soleil is a French synchrotron radiation facility currently under construction in the Paris suburbs. See [5] to get all information about Soleil. In December 2003, Elettra joins the club. Elettra is an Italian synchrotron radiation facility located in Trieste. See [20] to get all information about Elettra. Then, beginning of 2005, ALBA also decided to join. ALBA is a Spanish synchrotron radiation facility located in Barcelona. See [4] to get all information about ALBA. The new version of the Alba/Elettra/ESRF/Soleil control system is named TANGO[*] and is based on the 21 century technologies :
next up previous contents index
Next: 2 Getting Started Up: The TANGO Control System Previous: Contents   Contents   Index
Emmanuel Taurel 2012-06-06