Concepts for Gating EPICS Alarms

The Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) at KIT uses a customized software layer to “activate” EPICS alarms based on the operating state of the accelerator. Since KARA does not run 24/7 and also operates in very different modes, the basic idea is to be able to temporarily disable or enable some EPICS alarms based on certain conditions. To date, we have used our own Java software layer for this purpose. After more than 10 years of using, expanding and maintaining this service, both the wish list of features and the requirements have evolved. Together with the difficulties in maintaining the Java codebase and an upcoming new accelerator, it seems like a good time to re-evaluate the current approach and consider a complete redevelopment. Therefore, we are currently evaluating different approaches for the various aspects of such a system. The goal of this talk is to gather feedback, potential alternative ideas and opinions on how to best approach such a system in the current EPICS ecosystem.