Minutes of MW meeting  17 January 2003

Present:   Kris (minutes), Slavek,  Nikolai, Steen, Bartek

Bartek Paszkowski was introduced to the team. Bartek, who was already working with CMW in the past as Technical Student (Java Server Framework), is a fellow under supervision for Franck. For the next couple of month he will develop a framework for CMW gateways and proxies. The first application is a server, which will provide state information to GTPM console, based on alarm properties. Other servers will be a proxy for Passerelle subscriptions and a server publishing PS alarm state changes to the central alarm server (LASER).

C++ clients PVSS integration: PVSS driver was made and tested with test equipment. Bartek will make a server, which will compose a number of PS alarm states to a single device/property which can be subscribed to from ST. 

API for Motif applications: Slawek is working on the proxy for the equipment library.

RDA 2.0: To be released in about a week. This version supports Java clients and c++ servers. Java server support without fast update and admin facilities. This release will have:

• New IDL with some extensions, incompatible with previous IDL due to new Data definition.
• Data with unions rather than "any" -> performance improvements
• Support for admin interface for server statistics and control
• Common logger compatible with Log4J implementation
• possibility of specifying context in monitoring
• Packaging convenient for all platforms (Linux & Windows)
• Remove class from device resolution, interface for getClass() implementation
• Access control facilities

Nikolai said that due to changes to RDA the console of Steen will not work anymore. Management console made by Roland is mostly OK but is different in style so this needs some follow-up.

On access control and client information: The client information can be retrieved both on synchronous calls as well as for subscription. In addition to the default information (user name, host name), client context will be transmitted to the server when connection is established for the first time. The limitation is that context is set once in the client and cannot be changed. This is not technical limitation but a deliberate choice.

In connection with getClass() call Nikolai raised the question from which of the servers (get, set, monitor) this should come. It should be further discussed whether there is a need for separate servers for subscription. This option  is interesting for installing proxies to limit performance degradation due to number of subscribers.

Concerning logger names Nikolai proposed that for general purpose logging single level names are used (e.g. "client" instead of  "user.client" as it was proposed previously. For specialist logging (mostly to debug), hierarchical names should be used (.e.g. "rda.corba").

Future RDA versions: Further versions should deal with support for JDK 1.4 (tricky as there is a conflict between ORBacus and wrong definitions in JDK 1.4) and will use the new name server.

Biscoto CMW server: The details of subscription have been discussed with BI. The final server version is under implementation by Kris. 

Server framework: It  should be re-designed as a toolbox so that parts can be used in various servers. Issues do address: independency from RDA changes, remove definition wrappers, make subscription manager more flexible (signal to update one device/property or all devices for a given property), separate daemon support (signal catching, dump). Last news from Jens: the wrappers have been removed.

GM servers: problems on Linux and MTG's have been solved by Steen.

Action lists

CMW server developments

Libraries, utilities, bugs