8/Device Server Model¶

This document provides the specification of the Device Server.

Preamble¶

This Specification is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This Specification is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses.

This Specification is a free and open standard and is governed by the Digital Standards Organization’s Consensus-Oriented Specification System.

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Tango Device Server specification¶

This specification formally document the Tango Device Server model. Runtime implementation of the Device Server model in conforming Tango implementations MUST follow this specification.

Goals¶

In a Tango Control System a Device Server is in charge of managing the life cycle and the communication protocol of one or several Tango Devices. The Device Server can also offer different services to the clients as well as for the Device.

Additionally, it aims to:

Provide a blackbox that registers the operations executed on every Device
Be usable as a Device

Use Cases¶

The main use cases for Device Server are:

to manage several Devices in the same process.
to share the same channel of communication
to provide the connection protocols for accessing the managed Device
to provide different services like logging
to serialise the operations per Device
to sign up or sign out to the central registry

Specification¶

The Device Server manages the communication with one or several Devices. Additionally it enforces the compatibility of behaviour with the Tango Control System and offers different meta services.

The Device Server SHALL implement the following specifications to control and monitor the Device:

A Device Server represents the process which manages one or several Devices
A Device Server SHALL manage at least one Device.
A Device Server MAY manage Devices belonging to different Classes
A Device MUST NOT be managed by more than one Device Server
A Device Server instance reference SHALL be unique in a Tango Control system
The communication to the Device Server SHALL be done through a Tango Device so called Administration Device or Admin Device .

The specification introduces as well the definition of the processes which are used for the Administration Device Name:

A Server is a type of program which execute a Device Server
An Instance is an unique identifier as several processes of the same Server MAY exist in a Tango Control System
A Server Instance is finally what identify the actual process in the Tango Control System
A Server Instance CAN only execute one Device Server

The name of the Administration Device SHALL follow this convention:

administration-device-name = dserver "/" server "/" instance
dserver = "dserver" ; dserver is a reserved domain following the device-name convention.
server = family
instance = member

The family part of the Administration Device Name SHALL be the Server name
The member part of the Administration Device Name SHALL be the Instance

Device Server interface¶

Property Name	description
polling_threads_pool_conf	TODO

Command Name	Argument input	Argument Output	description
AddLoggingTarget	DevVarStringArray	DevVoid	Define the level of Logging(RFC-14
AddObjPolling	DevVarLongStringArray	DevVoid	Polling related command (RFC-10)
DevLockStatus	DevString	DevVarLongStringArray	Request Replay command (RFC-10))
DevPollStatus	DevString	DevVarStringArray	Polling related command (RFC-10))

The Device Export sequence¶

The phase called Device Export is intended to prepare all the managed Device for operation and accessibility in the Tango Control System by the Device Server:

The Device Server MUST take in charge of the Device Export
The Device Export SHOULD bring the Device at the same State than after an Init Command.
The Device Export SHOULD execute the Device Sign up of the Database(RFC-6), in order to be accessible locally and via network.

The Device Unexport sequence¶

The phase called Device Unexport is intended to prepare the all Device for stopping operate.

The Device Server MUST take in charge of the Device Unexport
The Device Unexport SHALL gracefully stop the Device operation, even if there are requests in progress.
The Device Unexport SHALL gracefully stop the communication with any Tango Client
The Device Unexport SHOULD unregister from the Tango Control system by executing the Device Sign Out of the Database(RFC-6), in order to notify that all managed Device are no longer accessible