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.

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Last update by Michelle Storey. 18/3/99