Re: MBBO Record Initialization (and a proposal)

[Eric Norum <norume@aps.anl.gov>]

On Sep 15, 2009, at 6:13 PM, Szalata, Zenon M. wrote:

> Hi Ben,
> I gave it some thought and it is not clear to me how to make this  
> into a general purpose support module.  It could be made into a  
> skeleton module, which a user could take and flash it out to make it  
> useful.
> Take a look at the three attached file, which is all I have in my  
> "proof of principle" soft IOC.
> In the IOC for which I need this, these three files are becoming  
> much more complex.  Simply said, the IOC first builds a data base of  
> all defined magnets and associated hardware.  This is done from a  
> setup file in C routines.  When this is done, then the mbbo records  
> are initialized by calling routines which retrieve data from the  
> magnets data base.  The IOC actually controls the Power Supplies  
> which feed power to the magnets and which are controlled and  
> monitored via a set of CAMAC modules.  So, the whole system is a  
> rather complicated mess.
So how about moving the complexity back a little?
Are you aware that a record can have fields set up from multiple .db  
files?
In your case, some off-line process reads the the magnets database and  
creates an 'mbboStrings.db' file.  This has record descriptions  
consisting only of the record name and the mbbo string names.
The IOC startup script sets up the mbbo records from multiple .db  
files -- one of which is the 'mbboStrings.db' file created above.
Although this requires an extra off-line step to se up the  
mbboStrings.db files it has some gains -- you can inspect the .db  
files and see what's going to be loaded.
--
Eric Norum <norume@aps.anl.gov>
Advanced Photon Source
Argonne National Laboratory
(630) 252-4793