The WIYN ODI instrument software architecture

As camera focal planes become larger, with higher resolutions and increasingly higher data throughputs, the more they resemble the enterprise data systems found in commercial data centers. The WIYN One Degree Imager (ODI) is such a system. ODI is a mosaic imager with 64 independent CCD detectors with a total resolution of approximately a gigapixel, covering 1 square degree of the sky at the WIYN 3.5 m telescope at Kitt Peak. The ODI camera will bring improved seeing, widefield imaging, new modes of operation and automated integration with the NOAO Science Archive. It will also become the workhorse instrument of the observatory, with high availability and reliability. The new flexibility of the camera will allow (and require) constant refinement of imaging techniques, and calibration and maintenance processes. Large scale, parallel data processing, management and control will be a constant in the operation of the instrument. We are developing an enterprise level data system using typical Java J2EE constructs. With the advent of relatively inexpensive clustered hardware, scaling of image operations and management to the large volumes of data in ODI should be simplified. We describe an architecture in construction for ODI's 2010 deployment.