KEYWORDS: Software development, Computer programming, Data storage, Computer programming languages, Operating systems, Radio telescopes, Databases, Antennas, New and emerging technologies, Complex systems
Software obsolescence affects all control systems (CSs) designed to last for decades. They are often based on operating system at the end-of-life, libraries, frameworks and on programming language versions that are not supported anymore. This legacy code forces GUIs, clients and third-party applications to cope with the same constraints of the CS, spreading the obsolescence even more widely. Profitable mainstream online services for code hosting and continuous deployment workflows are sometimes not exploitable. The software team can thus lose motivation because of the lack of the stimuli usually brought by innovation. On the other hand, sometimes it is impossible to afford a CS refurbishment, either because it requires a high manpower effort or it might impair the system stability. Some of these issues can be solved by designing a middleware, lying between the CS and the external world. The middleware exposes APIs to the clients and offers a level of abstraction from the operating system and the programming language. Moreover, the CS can be easily extended bypassing the old framework and taking advantage of new architectures. In this paper we present the solution we chose for the Sardinia Radio Telescope and the other radio telescopes managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics(INAF). We discuss the advantages and the drawbacks of a middleware and we also provide the technical details and technologies concerning our implementation.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to create a federated environment for hosting and processing research data, supporting science in all disciplines without geographical boundaries, so that data, software, methods and publications can be shared seamlessly as part of an Open Science community. This work presents the ongoing activities related to the implementation and integration into EOSC of Visual Analytics services for astrophysics, specifically addressing challenges related to data management, mapping and structure detection. These services provide visualisation capabilities to manage the data life cycle processes under FAIR principles, integrating data processing for imaging and multidimensional map creation and mosaicking and data analysis supported with machine learning techniques, for detection of structures in large scale multidimensional maps.
Large volumes of monitoring and logging data result from the operation of a large scale astrophysical observatory. In the last few years several “Big Data” technologies have been developed to deal with such volumes of data especially in the Internet of Things (IoT) framework. We present the logging, monitoring and alarm system architecture for the ASTRI Mini-Array aimed at supporting the analysis of scientific data and improving the operational activities of the telescope facility . A prototype was designed and built considering the latest software tools and concepts coming from Big Data and IoT and a particular relevance has been given in satisfying quality requirements such as performance, scalability and availability.
KEYWORDS: Databases, Data storage, Surface conduction electron emitter displays, Observatories, Data modeling, Galactic astronomy, Human-machine interfaces, Stars, 3D modeling, Interfaces
The VIALACTEA project has a work package dedicated to “Tools and Infrastructure" and, inside it, a task for the “Database and Virtual Observatory Infrastructure". This task aims at providing an infrastructure to store all the resources needed by the, more purposely, scientific work packages of the project itself. This infrastructure includes a combination of: storage facilities, relational databases and web services on top of them, and has taken, as a whole, the name of VIALACTEA Knowledge Base (VLKB). This contribution illustrates the current status of this VLKB. It details the set of data resources put together; describes the database that allows data discovery through VO inspired metadata maintenance; illustrates the discovery, cutout and access services built on top of the former two for the users to exploit the data content.
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