1. 10.10.2005ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005) Visual DCT’s Latest Hits Jaka Bobnar (jaka.bobnar@cosylab.com), Matej Sekoranja, Igor Verstovsek Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia Work in part funded by: Diamond (DLS)

2. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)2 Contents VisualDCT and EPICS Why using VisualDCT? Latest features and improvements –Alarm Handler plug-in –Channel Archiver plug-in –Spreadsheet view and editor –Substitutions file editor Conclusion

3. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)3 EPICS Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System requires specific configuration files: –record instance database files –additional EPICS extensions configuration files configuration files are text-based

4. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)4 What is Visual DCT? Visual Database Configuration Tool for EPICS Written in Java –Platform independent –Webstart support Open-source product

5. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)5 Why using VisualDCT Talks 100% EPICS –no additional files –preserves order, comments Hierarchical support Standard IDE features –clipboard, undo –object inspector, visual linking Plug-ins –freely extensible Easy and fun to use

6. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)6 Latest features Visual and functionality improvements: –zoom –printing –visual cues for different actions –improved building –bugfixes, etc. Plug-ins: –See next slides

7. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)7 Alarm Handler Configuration Plug-in (1) Alarm Handler displays EPICS alarm status Uses text based configurations files –difficult to maintain if database is large –hierarchical or flat Solution: a generic tool, which generates configurations files

8. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)8 Alarm Handler Configuration Plug-in (2) Record names are imported from VisualDCT template Displays the file structure as a tree Edit the tree to change values of properties Drag&Drop supported Automatic file consistency checking

9. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)9 Channel Archiver Configuration Plug-in Channel Archiver is an archiving toolset for EPICS Requires xml configuration file Hard to maintain if database is large Includes all Alarm Handler plug-in features Future plans: –include possibility to use a substitutions file

10. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)10 Spreadsheet View and Editor Graphical representation is useless when database is large A new view was proposed – spreadsheet style Records presented in an editable table Enables editing multiple records simultaneously Easy database error tracking

11. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)11 Substitutions File Editor EPICS database mechanism requires two input file:.template.substitutions Substitutions files with many macros are hard to maintain as a text file Plug-in will offer syntax checks of the substitutions files Large amount of macros will be easier to control

12. ICALEPCS (Geneva, Switzerland, October, 2005)12 Conclusions EPICS gained a powerful database development tool Editing databases can be fun VisualDCT will be supported in the future and will follow EPICS changes –Work in progress with Nick Rees Check out: http://visualdct.cosylab.comhttp://visualdct.cosylab.com