BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
This paper describes the development and use of an HTTP services architecture for building controls applications within the BNL Collider-Accelerator department. Instead of binding application services (access to live, database, and archived data, etc.) into monolithic applications using libraries written in C++ or Java, this new method moves those services onto networked processes that communicate with the core applications using the HTTP protocol and a RESTful interface. This allows applications to be built for a variety of different environments, including web browsers and mobile devices, without the need to rewrite existing library code that has been built and tested over many years. Making these HTTP services available via a reverse proxy server (NGINX) adds additional flexibility and security. This paper presents implementation details, pros and cons to this approach, and expected future directions.
