CIWS-FW: a Customizable InstrumentWorkstation Software Framework for instrument-independent data handling

TL;DR

The paper presents CIWS-FW, a flexible software framework designed for instrument-independent data handling in astrophysics, supporting data acquisition, processing, storage, and user interaction for space and ground-based experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, configurable software framework with reusable components for data management in astrophysics instrumentation, enhancing software reusability and extensibility.

Findings

Provides near real-time data processing and storage

Includes a user-friendly GUI for control and configuration

Features a web portal for documentation and development tools

Abstract

The CIWS-FW is aimed at providing a common and standard solution for the storage, processing and quick look at the data acquired from scientific instruments for astrophysics. The target system is the instrument workstation either in the context of the Electrical Ground Support Equipment for space-borne experiments, or in the context of the data acquisition system for instrumentation. The CIWS-FW core includes software developed by team members for previous experiments and provides new components and tools that improve the software reusability, configurability and extensibility attributes. The CIWS-FW mainly consists of two packages: the data processing system and the data access system. The former provides the software components and libraries to support the data acquisition, transformation, display and storage in near real time of either a data packet stream and/or a sequence of data files generated by the instrument. The latter is a meta-data and data management system, providing a reusable solution for the archiving and retrieval of the acquired data. A built-in operator GUI allows to control and configure the IW. In addition, the framework provides mechanisms for system error and logging handling. A web portal provides the access to the CIWS-FW documentation, software repository and bug tracking tools for CIWS-FW developers. We will describe the CIWS-FW architecture and summarize the project status.