The JCMT Telescope Management System
R.P.J.Tilanus
JAC / NFRA
Session ID: T10.07 Type: oral
Abstract:
Established telescopes often face a challenge when trying to
incorporate new software standards and utilities into their existing
real-time observing system. At the JCMT we have successfully added
important new features such as a Relational Database -the Telescope
Management System (TMS)- an online data Archive and WWW based
utilities to an, in part, 10-year old system. We are still actively
expanding and exploring these new capabilities.
The main components of the system are:
- a Sybase based RDBMS at the JCMT which forms the TMS. The
TMS receives notification of completed observations, logs the full
header information associated with the observations including many
hardware parameters, and archives atmospheric monitoring data.
- a Sybase based Astronomical Archive at the JAC in
Hilo. Astronomically relevant header information is extracted from the
TMS into a science-oriented archive together with the actual data on
disk (and, in the future, CD-ROM). The JCMT Archive has been developed
in collaboration with the CADC and uses (WWW-)Starcat as a frontend. A
automatically synchronised copy of the Archive tables is maintained at
CADC which is the main entry point for searches involving
non-proprietary data.
- WWW Observing Remotely Facility (WORF: see also a poster by
Frossie Economou and Tim Jenness). This facility allows a remote
observer to use a WWW net browser to consult real-time telescope
status screens (dumped as html pages), communicate with the on-site
observer (EWGIE), view the log he/she maintains, and inspect incoming
data. Several of these pages update automatically.
- a Sybase OpenServer application which allows the data files
on disk to be handed to remote clients as if the (binary) data was
residing in a DB table.
The application is also used by the TMS for
the initial retrieval of the data files from the real-time system and
to allow authorized (remote) users to retrieve data from the Archive.
One noteworthy aspect of this UNIX-based system is that a
state-of-the-art look-and-feel has been built around an existing
(VMS-based) real-time system while requiring the latter only to send a
single message to the TMS when an observation has finished. Although
currently the TMS is not used by the real-time system itself (a
possible future development), it provides the observatory staff and
observers with the general diagnostic capabilities of a fully
integrated RDBMS. Many features, especially the Web based utilities
required little local development and often took a few days rather
than months to implement.
Patrick P. Murphy
Tue Sep 10 22:27:19 EDT 1996