The Use of a Commercial Data Base Management System in the LAMPF Control System

The control system for the accelerator at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF) is currently being upgraded to run on a DEC VAX 11/780. To unify the several disparate control hardware protocols into one consistent software protocol requires that the hardware devices be addressed logically rather than physically, the physical connections being supplied by the control system. To accomplish this, the control system must have some link between the devices logical names and their physical connections. This link is supplied by a data base which is managed by a commercial data base management system. This paper discusses the reasoning behind the choice of a commercial system, the particular DBMS chosen and some of the pros and cons of using the DBMS as well as some of our experiences trying to join tools of the commercial world with the real-time world.