The new W7-X logbook – A software for effective experiment documentation and collaborative research at Wendelstein 7-X

Abstract

Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) completed its second operation phase in December 2017. A large number of diagnostics were operated in nearly 1000 experiment programs (XP) by an international research team. For the documentation of W7-X XPs, a new electronic logbook software has been developed. The software has been designed for the needs of W7-X researchers and engineers: a web-based logbook application for the entire team. For an effective documentation, large parts of the logbook content comes from automatically generated logs, complemented by the team members via web browser or REST API. The W7-X control software generates log entries for an XP during program execution. This includes automatic extraction of configuration information from the planned program, which is later represented as searchable tags within the logbook. In addition, users can add supplementary tags and rich-text comments to all logs. The logbook allows full-text search and range queries for numeric values: both with millisecond response times. A dedicated web page for each XP log contains overview plots from measurement data, generated on the fly from archived data. Separate component logs are created in the same way for diagnostics and machine sub-systems for different use cases, e.g., XPs, standalone tests, or calibrations. The logbook hosts separate pages for device operation and the W7-X components, providing status information and additional features. In this way it effectively supports the operation of W7-X.