Data Sources and EPICS

Table of Contents

Overview

This chapter will explain the preferences used to define and configure data sources for CS-Studio.

Preferences

The preference pages will allow to configure data sources. It can be found opening the Preferences dialog, and navigating to the CSS Core ⊳ Data Sources category. These pages take place of the old CSS Core ⊳ EPICS and CSS Core ⊳ Diirt preferences, allowing to configure EPICS Channel Access parameters, and other data sources available in the future.

Data Sources preferences page.

Restarting CS-Studio

When a preference is changed inside the Data Sources page or in one of its sub-pages, CS-Studio requires to be restarted to apply the new values. For this reason a dialog is displayed allowing to restart the application immediately, or postpone it for a later time.

DIIRT Preferences Changed dialog.

DIIRT Configuration Directory

The DIIRT Configuration Directory preference defines where DIIRT (the library used to talk with data sources) will find its configuration files.

If a valid configuration directory (see Programmer's Notes) is found, then all other preferences in this page and all the sub-pages will have their default values set from the DIIRT configuration files. If not, then the values in the configuration/plugin_customization.ini file (inside the CS-Studio application's folder) are used.

If DIIRT Configuration Directory preference is not set to a valid configuration directory, then its caption will be displayed in red. Moving the mouse over the caption will display a tool-tip showing why the directory is not valid.

Overriding Preferences

When a preference is overridden inside the Composite Data Source group, or in any of the Data Sources sub-pages, the corresponding preference's caption will be painted in blue. Reverting the preference to its default value (manually or through the Restore Defaults button) will revert the caption's color to its default.

Preference override.

Composite Data Source

The preferences in this section control the configuration of how the different data sources are combined and made accessible to the DIIRT library.

The composite data source allows multiple data sources to be made available by breaking up the channel name into three parts:

[data-source-name][delimiter][channel-name]

It also allows to set a default data source so that channel names that do not match the pattern are forwarded to that data source.

[unmatched-channel-name] → [default-data-source][delimiter][unmatched-channel-name]

The preferences in the Composite Data Source section are listed below.

Composite Data Source preferences.

Default Data Source The data source used by channel names not matching the default name pattern, so that:
[unmatched-channel-name] → [default-data-source][delimiter][unmatched-channel-name]
The possible values are: None, Channel Access, File, Local, PV Access, Simulation, and System. The default data source is None.
Delimiter The delimiter used in the pattern to parse the channel name. The default value is ://.

Exporting Configuration Data

Pressing the Export… button will allow to save the current Data Sources settings as a valid configuration directory (see Programmer's Notes). A dialog will be displayed to select the directory where to the settings will be saved. A confirmation message will be shown inside the Preferences dialog.