Creating Epics Soft Channels the Easy Way with Sddspcas: Features and Applications

Using sddspcas, a portable channel access server that is configured by SDDS input files, it is relatively simple to create process variables (PVs). It can be run in a standalone mode or it can be run so that the PVs are checked to ensure that they don’t conflict with other IOCs or portable channel access servers. It can also be run using the Run Control facility to prevent additional instances of the same sddspcas from being run. The SDDS configuration file provides the PV names, upper and lower limits, units, element counts if the PVs are waveforms, and the types of PVs. Valid types include various precision floats and integers as well as strings. One simple application of this program is that software developers can quickly test their code without requiring the coordination needed to update an IOC database to create PVs. Further details of the features, configuration, and applications of sddspcas will be discussed.