The Q System: An Experiment in Software Standardization for Data Acquisition

The LAMPF standard data-acquisition software system Q has been developed by many people so that it currently represents about 10 man-years of effort. The Q system provides the modular software tools a physicist needs to set up a working data-acquisition system. The components of Q are a data-acquisition language, a histogram package, a display package, automatic taping of data, and a standard hardware interface. An overview of the Q system will be given along with a discussion of the basic philosophy of the approach taken in its development. Future developments will also be mentioned.