[Paper Review] New Abeans for TINE Java Control Applications

J. Dovc, Miha Kadunc+5 more|ArXiv.org|Nov 9, 2001

Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems3 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents Abeans R3, a Java-based component framework with narrow-interface support for TINE, enabling cross-platform and web-deployable accelerator control applications. It demonstrates that while Visual Basic offers faster startup and lower resource use, Java-based Abeans provide platform independence, strong OOP support, and seamless integration with web browsers via applets, making them ideal for diagnostic and remote control applications.

ABSTRACT

Abeans [1] (wide-interface accelerator Java beans developed at JSI) have in the past been used with great success in control applications at ANKA and ESO and on test cases at the SLS and Riken. At DESY, TINE [2] is used as the principal control system for HERA as well as the intercommunication protocol among the HERA experiments. To date, most TINE-based client-side applications have been written using ACOP [3] (a narrow-interface accelerator component) in Visual Basic (VB), which has provided a remarkably powerful developing environment for generating professional control applications. Currently, however, VB control applications can only run on Windows-based desktop machines and consoles. As it is often desirable to provide certain control applications on non-Windows platforms (or indeed over the Web), we have created an equally powerful developing environment based on Java and the next release of Abeans, where an ACOP-like narrow-interface bean has been developed. Like ACOP, the Abean itself accepts plugs from various communication protocols, but was brought to fruition at DESY using the TINE Java class. Details concerning matching Abeans and TINE, as well as the pros and cons of wide versus narrow interfaces will be presented below. Several applications will also presented along with the results of benchmarking against similar VB applications.

Motivation & Objective

• To enable TINE-based control applications to run on non-Windows platforms and in web browsers.
• To address the limitations of Windows-only Visual Basic (VB) control applications in accelerator control systems.
• To develop a narrow-interface Java bean framework (Abeans R3) compatible with TINE's communication protocol.
• To compare the performance, development experience, and resource usage of Java-based Abeans with existing VB-based ACOP applications.
• To demonstrate platform-independent deployment of control applications using Abeans and TINE via web applets.

Proposed method

• Implement a TINE-specific plug for Abeans R3 using the channel model, abstracting communication protocols from application logic.
• Design a narrow-interface channel model where each control system property is represented as a Java bean with standard methods for reading/writing values and metadata.
• Use standard Java RMI and TINE Java classes to enable remote access to control system data with automatic type conversion.
• Leverage Java applets and web deployment to allow control applications to be launched directly from HTML pages without local installation.
• Utilize a single JVM to host multiple Abeans-based applications, reducing memory footprint compared to separate JVMs.
• Develop and test applications such as the TINE Instant Client, Archive Reader, and vacuum display panel using Visual Age for Java (VAJ).

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How does the performance of Abeans R3-based TINE applications compare to equivalent VB-based ACOP applications in terms of startup time and data acquisition latency?
• RQ2 To what extent does the use of a narrow-interface model in Abeans R3 improve maintainability and reusability compared to wide-interface models?
• RQ3 Can Java-based Abeans R3 applications be effectively deployed in web browsers using applets, and what are the implications for platform independence?
• RQ4 What are the differences in system resource consumption (especially memory) between multiple VB and multiple Java-based control applications on the same desktop?
• RQ5 How does the development experience with Visual Age for Java compare to Visual Basic in terms of IDE responsiveness, learning curve, and debugging efficiency?

Key findings

• The Abeans R3 framework enables TINE-based control applications to be deployed on non-Windows platforms and within web browsers via Java applets, achieving platform independence.
• Synchronous data acquisition over TINE takes approximately 2 milliseconds per call, showing no measurable performance difference between Abeans and VB applications.
• VB applications start in about 2 seconds from local disk, while Abeans-based applications take around 5 seconds, though both are perceived as responsive once running.
• Running multiple applications on a single desktop consumes significantly more memory with Java (e.g., 4+ Java apps cause OS strain) compared to VB, but this is mitigated by running multiple Abeans in a single JVM.
• The learning curve and debugging cycle in Visual Age for Java (VAJ) are steeper than in Visual Basic, with VAJ consuming ~40 MB of memory versus VB’s ~10 MB.
• Despite performance and development environment drawbacks, Abeans R3 provides strong advantages in object-oriented design and portability, making it ideal for web-deployed diagnostic tools.