Control of distributed data acquisition systems using object oriented methods

EMS (Experiment Message Specification) is a flexible software package, designed to build scalable distributed data acquisition systems for experiments at the Cooler Synchrotron (COSY) at the Forschungszentrum Julich. It uses an object oriented hardware mapping for control and monitoring, which is logically based on MMS arid FMS standards. Access from the experiment workstation is realized through TCP/IP socket communication, managed by a dedicated process on the workstation. The system is now 4 years in operation and an adaption to PC technologies is currently under development. Within the context of this upgrade, also the special communication process should be replaced by a standardized tool. The object oriented Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is seen to address the problem in an adequate way.