Using Tcl to Script CORBA Interactions in a Distributed System

In this paper we present the extensive use of a scripting language (Tcl) to run human readable/editable scripts in a CORBA distributed batch environment. The developed system is the "Advanced Process Control Framework" as outlined in the "APC Framework Initiative" which is a research and development project undertaken by AMD and Honeywell under the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology. The APC Framework System has been deployed in AMD's fab 25 and is fully functional. The paper discusses the issues involved in developing scripting mechanism which is capable of both interacting with other CORBA components and handling various data structures which are otherwise not addressable by the underlying scripting language. The flexibility and extendibility of the Tcl scripting language makes it easy to extend the core language. The paper also establishes the need for thread-safeness of Tcl. Examples of various data manipulation operations, calls to different CORBA components, and calls that help in synchronization are discussed.