Description: The Telescope Interface package provides all programmatic and command interfaces to the ATCS for external applications.
Package name: tif
Inheritance: Standard Package
Deployment: AT Control Workstation: tifControl process
The interfaces provided by the Telescope Interface package consist of:
The main component of the tif package is the tifControl task, that runs on the ATCS Control Workstation and acts as a single interface process for the whole system.
All commands an application wants to send to the ATCS must be actually sent to the tifControl process.
This process checks all received commands for correct syntax and re-routes them to the proper ATCS package.
The set of commands accepted by tifControl, with the corresponding routing information, is defined in a database table. Therefore, in order to modify the list of public ATCS commands, it is necessary only to modify the routing table and the Command Definition Table (CDT) of the tifControl process.
The complete Command Definition Table can be found in the ATCS Online Documentation.
The tif package provides a C++ tif access library with a set of functions to query the current status of the ATCS and the values of all main telescope parameters. Other functions allow to monitor events and alarms associated to typical telescope operating conditions.
The set of items and events is defined in a database table. Therefore, in order to modify the list of items accessible via the tif access library, it is necessary only to modify the configuration tables.
The complete table of items can be found in the ATCS Online Documentation.
The tif package defines a public database branch that can be read by external applications to get information on the current status of the ATCS and on the values of all telescope parameters available via the tif data query library.
Applications can access directly the database branch or it is possible to instantiate an instance of the branch in the environment of the application and setup the scan system to keep the information up to date. This is useful in particular display AT parameters in remote user interfaces.
In order to collect all the information to AT configuration values, the tif package need to access the database of many other ATCS packages. All these dependencies between the tif package and the other ATCS components are kept in the database and are not embedded in the code.
Command Definition Table: tifAT.cdt
Reuse from VLT TCS: 100%
The VLT TCS tif package provides exactly the same functionality and the code is fully reusable, since it is table driven. No changes in the original package are expected. The tif database branch in the ATCS workstation environment will be properly configured.
For more details see the VLT tif Design Description document [RDV08] and the VLT Telescope Control System User Manual [RDV12].Issues to be Determined or Resolved: None
Last modified: Mon Feb 25 13:55:38 UTC 2002