A GENERIC SOFTWARE INTERFACE SIMULATOR FOR ALMA COMMON SOFTWARE

The generic software interface simulator framework for Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Common Software (ACS) provides ALMA developers with an easy means to create and configure the behaviour of interfaces that have been defined using Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) Interface Definition Language (IDL). ACS consists of a set of application frameworks built on top of CORBA and provides the glue which binds other ALMA software subsystems together [7]. In short, ACS provides an implementation of the component-container design pattern via CORBA. Using the simulation framework, one can choose to predefine the behaviour of a simulated component by embedding simple Python commands within a section of the XML-based ACS configuration database (CDB). The option to configure simulated components ’ behaviour at run-time is also a possibility using a provided graphical user interface (GUI) or application programming interface (API) executed within the context of an interactive Python session. Additionally, if the means above have not been utilized to setup the components ’ behaviour the framework will dynamically provide an implementation of the entire component with a randomized behaviour. This framework is especially useful to ALMA developers for two reasons. On one side it allows developers to test their ow