Providing reusability in distributed object control systems

Large scale, distributed industrial and scientific systems share many technical problems in the implementation of their control systems. Up to the present control system developers have had little opportunity of reusing software developed in one control system in the implementation of another. With the advent of standards in distributed object technology, it is now feasible to reuse control objects in a deterministic manner across control systems. Such objects could be user-written components, (encapsulating) supervisory components or commercially available software such as expert systems or user interfaces. The CERN CICERO project aims to identify and implement the main building blocks of a generic control information system based on the distributed object techniques of CORBA. CICERO is producing an integrating environment, Cortex, into which distributed user control objects will ultimately be `plugged and played´ and a supporting information system for the configuration and management of Cortex has been designed to be sufficiently generic in nature to allow its reuse by any future control system used at CERN and potentially by medium to large scale industrial control systems such as power systems, satellite control and telecommunications network management. This paper describes how an object-oriented approach to designing and implementing Cortex will provide a reusable set of solutions to delivering large distributed control systems