Author: Chrin, J.T.M.
Paper Title Page
WEPKS024 CAFE, A Modern C++ Interface to the EPICS Channel Access Library 840
 
  • J.T.M. Chrin, M.C. Sloan
    Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
 
  CAFE (Channel Access interFacE) is a C++ library that provides a modern, multifaceted interface to the EPICS-based control system. CAFE makes extensive use of templates and multi-index containers to enhance efficiency, flexibility and performance. Stability and robustness are accomplished by ensuring that connectivity to EPICS channels remains in a well defined state in every eventuality, and results of all synchronous and asynchronous operations are captured and reported with integrity. CAFE presents the user with a number of options for writing and retrieving data to and fro the control system. In addition to basic read and write operations, a further abstraction layer provides transparency to more intricate functionality involving logical sets of data; such object sequences are easily instantiated through an XML-based configuration mechanism. CAFE's suitability for use in a broad spectrum of applications is demonstrated. These range from high performance Qt GUI control widgets, to event processing agents that propagate data through OMG's Data Distribution Service (DDS), to script-like frameworks such as MATLAB. The methodology for the modular use of CAFE serves to improve maintainability by enforcing a logical boundary between the channel access components and the specifics of the application framework at hand.  
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