EPEP: an operating system designed for experiment-control

Abstract

This paper describes an operating system and programming environment designed specifically for use in data-acquisition and experiment-control. The system, EPEP, is interpreter-based, object-oriented and very flexible. Features include easy-to-handle library and multitasking facilities, as well as facilities for interactive intervention in experiments running under program control. The same facilities allow the development of programs while an experiment is running on the same system. After describing how EPEP presents itself to the user, a few aspects of the implementation are discussed. The EPEP operating system, together with the loaded libraries and user program(s), form a database. The construction of the objects in this database, including program data structure and process descriptor, is discussed.

Index Terms

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Designing software

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Operating systems