On February 9 and 10 the 7-th CS-Framework Workshop took place at Helmholtz-Institut-Jena.
The CS-Framework stands for Controls System (for Experiments) and is an open source LabVIEW software package developed at GSI. It is a multi-threaded, event driven, object oriented and distributed framework with Supervision Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) functionality. An experiment control system can be developed by combining the CS framework with experiment specific add-ons. The development of CS-Framework started about 10 years ago. The main idea is to merge good device support provided by LabVIEW and National Instruments with the powerful concepts of object oriented software design. Because LabVIEW didn't support object oriented programming at that time, the developer of CS found a solution to create classes and objects with then available LabVIEW resources. This has made the development of advanced software application much easier.
Currently about twenty big experimental setups e.g. PHELIX Laser and HITRAP at GSI are controlled by systems based on CS. At POLARIS we use it for automation of the fifth amplifier. The workshop brought developers and users together and offered the opportunity to exchange experience and developed software. This time the combination of LabVIEW native object oriented paradigm with CS object solution was discussed. Also the laser shot database solution from GSI-PHELIX laser system was met with great interest and will be adapted by POLARIS and other groups.