Experiences with commissioning software tools at BESSY II

Software requirements evolve rapidly during the short commissioning period of a third generation light source. Main focus moves from atomic device control to complex conditioning, experiment performance, measurement data taking, beam quality maintenance and performance monitoring tasks. From the very beginning the essential tools have to be set up properly and need to be sufficiently adaptive to easily absorb the actual findings of the running in procedures. In this paper the major software modules at BESSY II are depicted and their relevance for the progress of the commissioning is rated. Implemented functionalities and used methods are described in more detail for the basic workhorses (like compound devices, handling of snapshot files, orbit control). Explanations are given why certain tools turned out to be less accepted or useful (yet)