XIX IMEKO World Congress Fundamental and Applied Metrology September 6−11, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal FLEXIBILITY EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF THE SOFTWARE FRAMEWORK FOR MAGNETIC MEASUREMENTS AT CERN Pasquale Arpaia 1,2 , Marco Buzio 1 , Vitaliano Inglese 1,3 1 CERN, Dept. TE (Technology), Group MSC, Geneva, Switzerland Marco.Buzio@cern.ch - Vitaliano.Inglese@cern.ch 2 Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy arpaia@unisannio.it 3 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy Abstract − The paper deals with the flexibility test of software frameworks for measurement applications, and, in particular, of the Flexible Framework for Magnetic Measurements (FFMM), developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in order to satisfy the new magnetic measurement requirements and to provide a uniform platform to handle all magnetic measurement applications. FFMM is designed to be flexible, reusable, maintainable, and portable. As part of the characterization of the framework from the point of view of both software quality and performance, this paper presents a metric suitable for its flexibility characterization. Experimental results are also provided for typical application scenarios of FFMM. Keywords: Accelerator measurement systems; Software development; Software flexibility. 1. INTRODUCTION Flexibility, the modification easiness of a system or component for use in applications or environments different from the design [1], is definitely one of the most desirable properties of any system to face changes in operational environment during its life. This is particularly true for software systems, both because they are often subject to extremely rapid technological development, and because some of them are specifically conceived to be employed in environment spanning a wide range of functional requirements, not fully predictable at the design stage. Unfortunately, despite their importance, flexibility and more in general software quality, are often neglected in software design and development. This paper presents the work related to software flexibility characterization carried out at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). In the past years, the test of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) superconducting magnets brought to incremental development of software for magnetic measurements with very strict requirements, without focusing on its quality, namely flexibility and reusability. The end of the series test on the LHC magnets marked a change in the requirements: the need for more specialized measurement applications to be performed on small-medium magnet batches arose. As a consequence, a new platform was required to span all magnetic measurement applications, increasing the flexibility of the measurement stations, and facilitating changes in the hardware configuration and measurement conditions. Conceptual work in this direction started in cooperation with the University of Sannio, by analyzing the state of the art [2]-[6], and subsequently by developing the Flexible software Framework for Magnetic Measurement (FFMM). The project was presented in [7] as an object-oriented framework, and further improved in [8] by exploiting an aspect-oriented approach, more widely discussed in specific papers [9]- [11]. Finally, a design of the framework kernel was presented [12]. However, now after prototyping and experimental applications, a comprehensive characterization of software performance, in terms of code quality and use flexibility is needed. In this paper, a metric suitable for FFMM flexibility characterization, as well as experimental results of tests are illustrated for some typical application scenarios of FFMM. 2. PROBLEM The FFMM is a software framework for magnetic measurement applications based on Object Oriented Programming (OOP), and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) [13]. Its basic ideas and architecture are discussed in [7], [11]. In particular, FFMM aims at supporting the user in developing software for automatic measurement systems by maximizing quality in terms of flexibility, reusability, maintainability, and portability, without neglecting efficiency, vital in actual test applications. Moreover, the requirements for a wide range of magnetic measurement applications, such as needed for the test of superconductive magnets for particle accelerators, have to be satisfied. In Fig.1, the FFMM architecture is illustrated. A test engineer (end user) produces a description of the measurement application, User Script, whose semantic 871 ISBN 978-963-88410-0-1 © 2009 IMEKO