Nova Event Logging System

Nova is a 200 terawatt, 10-beam High Energy Glass Laser currently under construction at LLNL. This facility, designed to demonstrate the feasibility of laser driven inertial confinement fusion, contains over 5000 elements requiring coordinated control, data acquisition, and analysis functions. The large amounts of data that will be generated must be maintained over the life of the facility. Often the most useful but inaccessible data is that related to time dependent events associated with, for example, operator actions or experiment activity. We have developed an Event Logging System to synchronously record, maintain, and analyze, in part, this data. We see the system as being particularly useful to the physics and engineering staffs of medium and large facilities in that it is entirely separate from experimental apparatus and control devices. The design criteria, implementation, use, and benefits of such a system will be discussed.