Commissioning software tools at the Advanced Photon Source

A software tool-oriented approach has been adopted in the commissioning of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory, particularly in the commissioning of the Positron Accumulator Ring (PAR). The general philosophy is to decompose a complicated procedure involving measurement, data processing, and control into a series of simpler steps, each accomplished by a generic toolkit program. The implementation is greatly facilitated by adopting the SDDS (self-describing data set) protocol, which comes with its own toolkit. The combined toolkit has made accelerator physics measurements easier. For instance, the measurement of the optical functions of the PAR and the beamlines connected to it have been largely automated. Complicated measurements are feasible with a combination of tools running independently