10.1.1. Introduction¶

Diamond Light Source Ltd (DLS) [1] is a not-for-profit company jointly owned by the UK government’s STFC and Wellcome Trust. Its purpose is to handle all aspects of planning, building and running of a major scientific research facility: a synchrotron light source.

The u.a.d.s.a plugin holds the DLS Scientific Software team’s data analysis and visualization package. It is implemented in Java using the Eclipse framework, Jython, jReality and other libraries. The analysis package originally was part of the Generic Data Acquisition (GDA) suite [2]. With their move to a plugin architecture, the code was split into relatively independent parts.

The basic data analysis was conceived to be driven by Jython, the Java implementation of the Python programming language. The package has been designed as a client/server model with multiple graphical clients which can replicate each other’s actions.

The command server can be controlled by Jython commands sent by clients. It, in turn, can direct certain actions of the clients.

10.1.2. Jython¶

The Jython aspect of the plugin comprises a Jython console and a command line with an editor (taken from PyDev).

Everything from Jython is available on the console. In addition, there is a Python/Jython package called ScisoftPy that allows some functions to be scripted. This package is described in the Python plugin documentation. See the Jython documentation at its website [3].

10.1.3. Graphical User Interface¶

This user guide primarily documents some aspects of the graphical interface. The Eclipse framework provides an overall workbench comprising editors and views set out in a number of perspectives. These perspectives are either pre-configured or user customized arrangements of the editor and view panes.

Following sections of this user guide explain the use and capability of the perspectives, editors and views developed by the Scientific Software team.

10.1.4. References¶