Australia Telescope Observatory Management System (ATOMS)
A brief summary of The Technology and The
Benefits to Australia of the aspects of the ATOMS project relevant to
the MNRF upgrade is presented here. Further details of the ATOMS project,
for scientists and engineers, are given in the Technical
Details pages.
The Technology
The more stringent antenna control and monitoring requirements of the Australia
Telescope Compact Array operating at high frequencies make it essential
to upgrade the telescope antenna control computers. The task of implementing
the next-generation antenna control computers has been absorbed into the
ATOMS project, with the aim of demonstrating the effectiveness of new software
design and management techniques. The MNRF contribution to the ATOMS project
is in the form of funding for two positions to help with the implementation
of the antenna control computers.
It is expected that a prototype antenna control computer will be available
by mid-1999 and that production machines will be installed in the Australia
Telescope Compact Array antennas in early 2000.
The various locations of the ATNF make it especially challenging to develop
software that will work and that can be developed at any of the ATNF sites,
so another important ATOMS initiative is the planning and implementation
of a distributed online software development environment. This will enable
software development for the ATNF online systems that can support distributed
development across the ATNF sites.
Further details of the ATOMS project, for scientists and engineers, are
given in the Technical
Details pages.
The Benefits to Australia
Software quality and reliability is an issue of growing concern in today's
increasingly complex systems. The ATOMS project involves designing a software
engineering process that facilitates the production of software that is
both high quality and able to evolve. This work is of interest to the wider
Australian community and is available under a public license agreement.
Recent graduates are currently working on the ATOMS project to give them
extra training in practical software development techniques that they can
then use in the wider community.
Further details of the ATOMS project, for scientists and engineers, are
given in the Technical
Details pages.
Go
to MNRF Project Pages
Go to MNRF Home Page
Go to ATNF Home Page
Last update by Michelle Storey. 18/3/99