Data Display Tool

Purpose of the software

The Data Display Tool (DDT) will be used in the scope of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) of ESO. The software can be used to transport the data (images or other types of data) from the sources of data, the so-called Publishers, to the consumers of data, the so-called Subscribers.

The DDT software is split into four major components. First is the Data Transfer. It can be used to transfer data through a network of computers. The Data Transfer Components contain software libraries that can be used by Publisher and Subscriber applications.

Data is relayed from Publishers to Subscribers using so-called Data Brokers. Data Brokers will be used to transfer data from Publishers to Subscribers or to other Data Brokers on other hosts.

The Data Transfer components also offer functions that allow the monitoring of the quality of the data transfer.

../_images/data_display_tool_components.jpg — Fig. 1 Data Display Tool Components

The other components of the DDT software are rather used for the display or manipulation of data that was transferred using the Data Transfer.

These components are the Data Visualisation and the Image Handling components. While the Data Visualisation is a library of GUI elements, so-called widgets, that can be used to build customer applications for accessing data, the Image Handling library offers a set of functions that can be used to manipulate (image) data.

Also included in the Data Visualisation component is an application, the DDT Standard Viewer, which is kind of a reference application that includes a set of DDT widgets.

The Python Components that are part of the DDT offer Python wrappers for the other DDT components that are all based on C++ code. The Python Components allow to integrate the libraries of the DDT software into Python applications.