!CHAOS: THE "CONTROL SERVER" FRAMEWORK FOR CONTROLS

We report on the progress of !CHAOS [1], a framework for the development of control and data acquisition services for particle accelerators and large experimental apparatuses. !CHAOS introduces to the world of controls a new approach for designing and implementing communications and data distribution among control system’s components and for providing the middle-layer services for a control system. Based on software technologies developed for high-performance Internet services !CHAOS offers, by using a centralized highly-scalable cloud-like design, all the services needed for controlling and managing a large infrastructure. It includes a number of peculiar features such as high abstraction of services, devices and data, easy and modular customization, extensive data caching for enhancing performances, integration of all services in a common framework. Since the !CHAOS conceptual design was presented two years ago the INFN group have been working on the implementations of services and components of the software framework. Most of them have been completed and tested for evaluating performance and reliability. Some services are already installed and operational in experimental facilities at LNF.