1. IT-CO Activities
Controls Review

2. Overview
Mandate: ‘Provide controls support to CERN experiments – primarily LHC’
Organized in two sections BE and FE
BE responsible for backend technologies and their support
FE responsible for frontend and NI technologies and their support
15 staff and 8 visitors (PJAS, TECH, Fellow, etc.)
IT MTP shows current staff level being maintained until 2010
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 2

3. CERN-wide Support - I PVSS
First-line support , including related technologies, e.g. Qt, Oracle,..
Technical contact to the company, including the participation in joint developments, e.g. Oracle archiving
Generation of licenses for LHC experiments
Acting as interface partner to obtain licenses for other projects
Provision of consultancy and training courses
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 3

4. CERN-wide Support - II OPC NI LabView Technical support for OPC
CERN representative on OPC Foundation
Specification and validation of certain OPC servers
NI LabView
Technical support for NI products, particularly LabView
License management
Technical contact to NI for all products used at CERN
Organization of training courses
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 4

5. CERN-wide Support - III
CANBus
Technical support for the CANBus fieldbus
DIP
Support and maintenance for the Data Interchange Protocol
Operation of the DIP DNS
Security
Leading CNIC effort
Participation in CERN security team
Provision of TOCSSIC security vulnerability test environment
Presentation title - 5

6. Support to Experiments - I
Direct experiment support
Contact person for each experiment
Consultancy and debugging support for experiments teams
Front-end technologies
General support and consultancy for front-end technologies (e.g. ProfiBus and ModBus), including middleware (e.g. DIM)
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 6

7. Support to Experiments - II
PLC
Consultancy to the physics community on the use of PLCs as well as first-line support for them
SLiC
Development and maintenance of an OO front-end framework written in C++ and used by COMPASS
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 7

8. Development, Support and Maintenance
JCOP Framework (used by LHC experiments, COMPASS, some aspects by the UNICOS team and previously used by HARP and NA60)
Development/maintenance of many components
Provision of training courses
Gas Control System (GCS)
Development and maintenance of 24 applications built using the GCS Model-Based Framework (benefits from UNICOS)
Detector Safety System (DSS)
Development and maintenance of data driven application for 4 LHC experiments
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 8

9. Relations with other Groups
LHC experiments and sub-detectors
COMPASS DCS Team
NA48 DCS Team
UNICOS Team
PH-ESE
PH-DTI-Gas
IT/DES, IT/PSS (PVSS Oracle archiving)
IT/IS, IT/FIO, IT/CS (CNIC)
TS/CV, TS/EL, TS/CSE
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 9

10. Positives - I
Significant developments done with (very) limited resources
Able to achieve commonality in many areas
A well defined, and appreciated, support in a neutral department
Good mixture of development and support
Some synergy with central support services, e.g. use of cvs, Remedy, Savannah, Oracle
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 11

11. Positves - II
Were able to get Fellow/PJAS when necessary to supplement effort (paid for by PH)
Good collaboration with other teams, e.g. UNICOS (even though no formal agreements)
GSC and DSS development approach
Presentation title - 12

12. Negatives Resource limited ‘Too limited’ mandate
Lack of flexibility (sickness, holiday)
Knowledge with too few people
Missed opportunities, e.g. MCS, COMPASS, more detailed developments for LHC expts, etc. (Development done less efficiently elsewhere)
‘Too limited’ mandate
Split of H/W (PH/ESE, PH/DT1) and S/W
Moving into maintenance
Overlap with other groups, e.g. AB/CO, PH-DT1
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 13

13. Summary
Good
Service to experiments (technical support and application development)
CERN-wide services but should avoid duplication
Bad
Need more flexibility (resources)
Widen mandate (vertically and horizontally)
Overlap with other groups
Formal collaborations?
Summary of IT/CO Activities - 14