Users' Guide
Contents
Introduction
Synoptic is a system for online graphical representation of changing data. The project is developed and maintained by the Accelerator Controls department at Fermilab. Its main application is for the Laboratory's Data Acquisition and Control System, where Synoptic Displays are used on-line to show live status of various technical facilities.
Synoptic is the next generation of ACNET Lexigraphics and EPICS MEDM applications. As shown on the diagram below, the system consists of the three main parts: Project Builder, Project Repository, and Runtime Engine. All of them are Java applications. Project Builder runs standalone on the client machine. It is a custom graphical editor used to arrange and interconnect the components that make up the displays. The projects can be stored either in local files, or in a central location. The instance of Project Repository runs inside a servlet container (Apache Tomcat at this time.) It provides the displays' source code to Runtime Engines that perform an essential role in the system by starting necessary data acquisition jobs and rendering the results. The Engines can run in two modes: either as standalone applications on the client machines, or inside a web container on the server. In the former case, the Synoptic Display—an equivalent of a MEDM screen—is shown right inside the application's frame. In the latter case, the resulting image is sent to the client in SVG format via HTTP and is rendered in a web browser. This requires very little configuration, no custom software installation on the client side, and a low bandwith (around 100–1000 byte/sec.) In the standalone mode, Runtime Engine can potentially make settings to the control system; in SVG mode the data are provided read-only.
The main advantages of Synoptic over other systems are:
- An open and portable data format is used to convey and store the projects, components, and graphical data
- The central project repository is used to store the displays, allowing to share them among multiple users
- The projects saved in the repository immediately become available for execution
- A standard web browser with SVG support is usually sufficient to view the displays
- Synoptic Displays are updated smoothly without blinking of the picture
At this time we support ACNET DAQ jobs and EPICS (through jca library). Support of other data sources is, in fact, just a matter of availability of a Java API for them.
Fig 1. Synoptic Architecture.
System Requirements
- Web Browser Requirements
- This requirements are not very tough. It is essential, however, that you use an exact configuration described in the table. The Synoptic image transfer mechanism requires three capabilities properly supported in a browsers: SVG rendering, JavaScript, and DOM tree processing. Every browser has different understanding what that means. So, currently we tested the following browsers and operating systems:
| Mozilla Firefox | Microsoft Internet Explorer | Apple Safari | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | Yes | Requires Adobe SVG Plugin | |
| Linux | Yes | ||
| Mac OS X | Yes | Yes |
- Java Environment
- Project Builder and standalone Runtime Engine require Java 5 SE runtime environment. The applications can be started from the web.
Using Synoptic Displays
To start a Synoptic Display, go to the list of running instances (servers), and click a “Main Repository” link. Then find a desired display in the directory tree and click on its name to get the SVG image in the browser. You can also click "GIF" or "JPEG" links if your browser does not support SVG.
Using Project Builder
There is detailed, but obsolete, Synoptic Display User's Guide where you can find all the information how to use the builder.