BDNLS - BESSY device name location service

Initially the relational database (RDB) for control system configuration at BESSY has been built around the device concept. Maintenance and consistency issues as well as complexity of scripts generating the configuration data, triggered the development of a novel, generic RDB structure based on hierarchies of named nodes with attribute/ value pairs. Unfortunately, it turned out that usability of this generic RDB structure for a comprehensive configuration management relies on sophisticated data maintenance tools. On this background BDNLS, a new database management tool, is currently under development using the framework of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. It uses the Model View Controller (MVC) layer of JFace to cleanly separate retrieval processes, data path, data visualization and actualization. It is based on extensible configurations defined in XML allowing to chain SQL calls and compose profiles for various cases. It solves the problem of data key forwarding to the subsequent SQL statement. BDNLS has the potential to map various levels of complexity into the XML configurations. This provides usable, tailored database access to configuration maintainers for different underlying database structures. Based on Eclipse, the integration of BDNLS into Control System Studio is straight forward. (authors)