Improving control integration in Plasma Control System with an XML-based model-driven approach

Control systems for experimental physics, such as the Plasma Control System (PCS), demand constant modification of control algorithms to test new theories. This need for agile development often conflicts with the critical requirement of maintaining data consistency across heterogeneous system components, such as user interfaces and databases. This paper introduces a lightweight, eXtensible Markup Language (XML)based, model-driven approach designed to resolve this conflict within the Lingshu PCS framework. At its core is a simple, human-readable data model that serves as the Single Source of Truth (SSoT) for all algorithm-related data. Coupled with a dedicated toolchain, our approach automates the generation of crucial engineering artifacts, including C++ code skeletons and user interface templates, directly from the model. This method ensures end-to-end data consistency, streamlines the development cycle, and provides a pragmatic, low-overhead approach tailored to the integration of control algorithms.