The DataCapturer component for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array

We describe the data capture process (DataCapturer) for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) control software. This is implemented as a JAVA-based CORBA-component running in the framework of the ALMA Common Software (ACS). During an observation, data (e.g., visibilities) and meta-data (e.g., information describing the state of the hardware, antennas, source, etc) flow through the control system and need to be recorded. All meta-data flows through the DataCapturer component where it is collected and organized as an ALMA Science Data model (ASDM) dataset and then written to the ALMA archive data base.

DataCapturer is the interface between the telescope and the science domain. In the telescope domain it gets raw information from the control system and the correlator and produces science formated data for ALMA subsystems in the science domain. ASDM data is delivered to the Quicklook display sub-system and the telescope calibration sub-system of the ALMA Software. The final dataset is stored at the end of a sequence of observations (combined in an execution block) in the ALMA science archive.