Device Configuration Handler for Accelerator Control Applications at Jefferson Lab

The accelerator control system at Jefferson Lab uses hundreds of physical devices with such popular instrument bus interfaces as Industry Pack (IPAC), GPIB, RS-232, etc. To properly handle all these components, control computers (IOCs) must be provided with the correct information about the unique memory addresses of the used interface cards, interrupt numbers (if any), data communication channels and protocols. In these conditions, the registration of a new control device in the control system is not an easy task for software developers. Because the device configuration is distributed, it requires the detailed knowledge about not only the new device but also the configuration of all other devices on the existing system. A configuration handler implemented at Jefferson Lab centralizes the information about all control devices making their registration user-friendly and very easy to use. It consists of a device driver framework and the device registration software developed on the basis of ORACLE database and freely available scripting tools (perl, php)