Controls Middleware: the New Generation

A new Controls Middleware (CMW) for the "LHC era" has been recently designed and implemented to serve the CERN accelerator sector. It is object-oriented and supports two conceptual models: The Device model traditionally used in accelerator controls and the Topic model, which is widely used in the commercial world. Unlikely previous middleware solutions, developed in the 80's, this middleware is completely build upon commercial standards: CORBA for synchronous calls, JMS (Java Message Service) for message passing and OPC (OLE for Process Control) for integration of industrial equipment. The subscription paradigm is supported in both Device and Topic models. This paper presents the system architecture and an overview of the user facilities and API's. The experience with CMW, the issues of integration of CORBA, JMS and OPC and system administration are addressed as well.