Re: How to get a list of all available PVs

[luedeke <andreas.luedeke@psi.ch>]

Hello Carlos,
I actually think that this feature is not just "nice-to-have", it is
really mandatory. And many facilities solved it on their own somehow:
e.g. crawling with scripts through all IOC boot directories to parse DB
and substitution files and upload it into a relational database is the
solution used by IRMIS.

At our institute (PSI) every IOC has a generic part of the start-up
script, called from every IOC after iocInit, that will create a list of
record names with RTYP and DESC, using the "dbl" command and then call a
command to upload the list to the oracle database. On VME IOCs this is a
"rsh" call to the boot PC, the PC IOCs just call the command in a shell.
The database can be used for all types of checks: when was a channel
first created, when was it removed? Did the record type of a channel
change? Do all channels used in my user interface exist (good to be able
to check that in a shutdown when half of the IOCs are down)?

Your idea to provide a generic display for all channels with a given
prefix can be implemented, too. We have such an application, reading the
channel list from the oracle database and connecting to the channels.
But it is not used that much. But a good naming convention, clearly
signifying channels that are meant to be used in user interfaces, could
help here to make it more useful.

Just keep asking: at one point someone will implement a generic solution
in EPICS base ;-)

Andreas

PCaPac 2002 http://goo.gl/GU7Z9, EPICS CM 2003 http://goo.gl/hl1az

-- 
() Andreas Luedeke, Tel+41-56-3104002, http://people.web.psi.ch/luedeke
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