THE USE OF ORACLE FOR DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF EPICS DATABASES

The use of EPICS (1) in a part of the DESY accelerator controls has in itialized the development of special tools to create and maintain IOC (Input Output Controller) databases containing tens of thousands of EPICS records. This paper presents the process of designing IOC dbs and the relevant tools for supporting IOC dbs by ORACLE(2) facilities developed using ORACLE FORMS(3). The process of designing a concrete IOC database includes the definition of a set of EPICS records, the assignment of names to records according to the certain rules and the setting of values to fields of records distinct from initial values determined by types of EPICS records. As a number of IOC dbs can have groups of records, which differ only by their names and by the values of individual fields of records, individual prototypes for such groups are defined. The requirements on the tools to create and maintain IOC db's are: • The satisfaction of the various users of accelerator controls; • The storage all IOC db in a unified base, which allows to coordinate the information in the developed IOC db (for example, guarantee of uniqueness of record names in all IOC db); • The formalization of several procedures in order to simplify the process of designing IOC dbs, large amounts of information brought into IOC dbs;