1. 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

2.  Goals  Technologies Control System Studio Web Applications APIs XAL Overview R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 2

3.  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

4.  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

5. In Use - Control System Studio [2] R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 5

6.  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

7. In Use – Web Applications [2] R. Gaul, Controls Database Collaboration, 18 Nov 2011, Slide 7

8. 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

9. 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

10.  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