Upgrading the SPS Operational Software for the LHC Era: The SPS-2001 Software Project

In December 1996, it was decided to set up a project to re-engineer the CERN SPS Accelerator application software to improve the operational efficiency and to cover the specific needs of the SPS as LHC injector. The mandate of this project is to provide a first working version of the software in June 2001 and a final version in July 2003. It will make use of the emerging CERN accelerator control infrastructure amongst which the new Java Application Programming Interface (this conference). This presentation reviews the reasons why the project was launched, its scope and objectives, the project planning and the methods used to run the analysis. The first results of the analysis phase and their implications for the application software, for the control infrastructure and for the accelerator equipment software services will be presented