Application of CORBA to the SOLIS Communications System
Janet E. Tvedt · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2002
The National Solar Observatory is nearing completion of the Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun (SOLIS) project. SOLIS will replace the existing capabilities of the Vacuum Telescope on Kitt Peak near Tucson, Arizona and will provide new scientific capabilities over its expected 25 year life-time. The evolution of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the availability of compliant Object Request Brokers (ORBs) and Common Object Services (COS) facilitates the development of cross-platform, multi-language software systems that are reliable and flexible. The SOLIS Communications System employs three ORBs, a naming service and a notification service to support the project's core distributed and real-time control systems that are written primarily in Java or C++ for the Linux, Solaris and VxWorks operating systems. One particularly useful aspect of the communications system is the ease of event monitoring demonstrated by the development of tools such as a logging service and a generic instrument control graphical user interface.