Introduction

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... A few words...

Acquiring, collecting and analyzing data is the essence of mankind to satisfy his urge for understanding natural phenomena by comparing "real" events to his own symbolic representation. These fundamental steps paved human evolution and in the world of science they have been the keys to major steps forward in our understanding of nature. Until the last couple of decade's -when "Silicium" was still underground, the PPP protocol (Paper, Pencil and Patience) was the basic tool for this "unique" task. With the development of the "Central Processing Unit", data acquisition using computers wired to dedicated hardware instrumentation became available. This has allowed scientists to sit back and turn their minds towards finding solutions to problems such as "How do I analyze all these data?" Since the last decade or so when "connectivity" appeared to be a powerful word, the data acquisition system had to adapt itself to that new vocabulary.

Based on this sudden new technology, several successful systems using de-centralization of information have been developed. But the task is not simple! If the hardware is available, implementing a true distributed intelligence environment for a particular application requires that each node have full knowledge of the capability of all the other nodes. Complexity rises quickly and generalization of such systems is tough. Recently more pragmatic approaches emerged from all this, suggesting that central database information on a system may be more adequate, especially since processing and networking speed are not a "real" concern these days. MIDAS and its predecessor HIX may be counted part of the precursor packages in the field.

The old question: "How do we analyze all these data?" still remains and may have been the driving force behind this evolution :-).

What is Midas?

The Maximum Integrated Data Acquisition System (MIDAS) is a general-purpose system for event based data acquisition in small and medium scale physics experiments. It has been developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) and at TRIUMF (Canada) between 1993 and now (Release of Version 2.1.0). Presently ongoing development are more focused on the interfacing capability of the Midas package to external applications such as ROOT for data analysis (see MIDAS Analyzer).

Midas is based on a modular networking capability and a central database system. MIDAS consists of a C library and several applications. They run on many different operating systems such as UNIX like, Windows NT, VxWorks and use to run in the old days on MS-DOS, VMS, OSF/1 . While the system is already in use in several laboratories, the development continues with addition of new features and tools. Recent developments involved multi-threading, FGPA/Linux support, MSCB extension.

For the newest status, check the MIDAS home page: Switzerland , Canada

What can MIDAS do for you?

MIDAS has been designed for small and medium experiments. It can be used in distributed environments where one or more frontends are connected to the backend via Ethernet. The frontend might be an embedded system like a VME CPU running VxWorks or Linux or a PC running Windows NT or Linux. Midas transfer data rates capabilities are close to the type of hardware limits used.

For small experiments and test setups the front-end program can run on the back-end computer thus eliminating the need of network transfer, presuming that the back-end computer has direct access to the hardware. Device drivers for common PC-CAMAC interfaces have been written for Windows NT and Linux. Drivers for PC-VME interfaces are commercially available for Windows NT and for Linux as well. Midas provides a large variety of drivers based on their use within the physiscs community. CAMAC is slowly phased out and VME based modules take the relay. So far no cPCI modules has made to our physics experiements.

For data analysis, users can write their own analyzer using simple Midas calls to retrieve the necessary data or use one of the standard MIDAS analyzer:

The MIDAS package contains also a slow control system which can be used for all sort of control such as high voltage supplies, temperature control units, GPIB, serial devices such as MSCB, RS232 or Ethernet based modules. The slow control system is fully integrated in the main data acquisition and act as a front-end with particular built-in control mechanism. Slow control values can be written together with event data to tape.

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Midas DOC Version 2.0.2 ---- PSI Stefan Ritt ----
Contributions: Pierre-Andre Amaudruz - Sergio Ballestrero - Suzannah Daviel - Doxygen - Peter Green - Qing Gu - Greg Hackman - Gertjan Hofman - Paul Knowles - Exaos Lee - Rudi Meier - Glenn Moloney - Dave Morris - John M O'Donnell - Konstantin Olchanski - Renee Poutissou - Tamsen Schurman - Andreas Suter - Jan M.Wouters - Piotr Adam Zolnierczuk