Web applications for experimental control at CLS

Abstract

The advantages of web applications have already got attention in major physical research facilities like Canadian Light Source (CLS). It is the accessability of web applications that makes them preferred to native desktop application in some experimental control scenarios. This short paper presents two web applications that were mainly developed at CLS - Science Studio for remote access and collaboration of instruments and computation resources, and Logit for beamline experiment information management. These two applications represents two typical web applications. Science Studio is heavy-weight and provides a large spectrum of functionalities and has been developed by distributed teams for years. Logit is light-weight, and provides very limited set of features and was delivered in a very short time. The architectural designs are discussed for both sides, and the lessons learned from them are discussed.