The ALMA Common Software (ACS) provides a software infrastructure common to all partners and consists of a documented collection of common patterns in control systems and of components, which implement those patterns. The heart of ACS is an object model of controlled devices, called Distributed Objects (DOs), implemented as CORBA network objects. Components such as antenna mount, power supply, etc. are defined by means of DOs. Programmers can write Java client applications by connecting those Beans with data-manipulation and visualization Beans using commercial visual development tools or programmatically.
ACS is based on the experience accumulated with similar projects in the astronomical and particle accelerator contexts, reusing and extending concepts and components. Although designed for ALMA, ACS has the potential for being used in other new control systems and other distributed software projects, since it implements proven design patterns using state of the art, stable and reliable technology. It also allows, through the use of well-known standard constructs and components, that other team members that are not authors of ACS easily understand the architecture of software modules, making maintenance affordable even on a very large project .

Introduction from:
CHIOZZI et al. (2002) – CORBA-based Common Software for the ALMA project, SPIE Advanced Telescope and Instrumentation Telescope Control Software II,Kona, HW, Aug 2002, Proc. SPIE 4848, pp.43-54