THE USE OF WIZARDS IN CREATING CONTROL APPLICATIONS

Abstract In modern times control systems are becoming,more complex,at the ,same ,time that control groups ,are tightening their belts and staff are consisting of fewer and fewer people. Hardware ,specialists and machine physicists (and not computer,scientists!) are frequently being called upon ,to develop ,and maintain ,control system,applications. There ,are ,at least ,three approaches a control system engineer can take to make life easier for such developers: 1) ‘No programming’,- servers are database driven, clients are wide-interface or widget driven. 2) ‘Do it yourself’ - developers must beable,to use ,an application ,programmer’s ,interface (API) and know ,how ,to program ,in the ,designated language,3). ‘Wizard based’ – developers ,enter application criteria into a ‘wizard’ which produces code (i.e. a project), which can run as is and/or be used as a starting point for further development. We report here on the third approach in the context of the TINE control system,at DESY. The ,TINE server wizard will be presented, which generates server-side projects in C or Visual Basic. The ,TINE client wizard will also be presented, which generates client-side projects in Visual Basic, Java, and DDD (DOOCS Data Devices).