Pva-ify questions

[David Bracey via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

These questions are for Kay Kasemir, but I’m going to put them here so all can benefit.

We are interested in using pva-ify to bring some CA iocs into our PVA-only EPICS deployment.

Some questions, from having only read the README and attempted the demo:

1.  Does the pva-ify server appear as an IOC in its own right, serving PVs?  Or does it invisibly transmute the packets, leaving the originator’s user credentials and host information intact?
2.  Is there any “loss of fidelity” translating CA to PVA, or vice versa?  Obviously CA does not do normative types, so something has to happen there.
3. The README mentions bridging between two networks, with CA on one side and PVA on the other.  Is having two distinct networks a requirement?  The demo simply has one run a CA softIoc, and then look for PVA versions of the PVs.

I confess I have not been successful with the demo yet, but I have only just set it up and done an hour’s tinkering.  I would like to get a little deeper into it before asking for further help.

Dave Bracey

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory