Using a commercial mathematics software package for on-line analysis at the BNL Accelerator Test Facility

By writing both a custom Windows NT^TM dynamic link library and generic companion server software, the intrinsic functions of MathSoft´s Mathcad^TM have been extended with new capabilities which permit direct access to the control system databases of Brookhaven National Laboratory´s Accelerator Test Facility. Under this scheme, a Mathcad worksheet executing on a personal computer becomes a client which can both import and export data to a control system server via a network stream socket connection. The result is an alternative, mathematically oriented view of controlling the accelerator interactively