UCO/Lick already makes heavy use of Gnu C (gcc) and some use of Gnu C++ (g++), as well as many standard tools from the MIT X11 toolkit. Establishing X11 and Gnu C as standards for DEIMOS exploits existing expertise and imposes no additional costs for licensing, installation, or retraining.
UCO/Lick already owns two Sybase servers. Development work can proceed using these servers, without additional investment in hardware or commercial software. This postpones the acquisition of a Sybase license until the actual commissioning of the instrument. Using Sybase for the DEIMOS database engine exploits existing expertise and imposes no immediate costs for licensing, installation, or retraining. Keck-I already owns one Sybase license (in support of the commercial "Remedy" trouble logging system). Whether this server could be expanded to meet DEIMOS/Keck-II needs is questionable; however, some degree of Sybase expertise already exists at Keck.
UCO/Lick already makes heavy use of Tcl/Tk tools. We have invested significant time in, among other things, a database administrator/user GUI for Sybase (collaboration between myself, at Lick, and independent contractor Tom Poindexter in Colorado). I have also developed, to administrative requirements, a fairly full-featured X11 forms interface to Sybase, which permits data entry, data correction, data browse and query, and simple report generation. Much of this code can be immediately recycled into the DEIMOS information management system, exploiting existing resources.
UCO/Lick makes use of a variety of free graphical analysis and display tools, of which some subset may be adopted and/or customized for use as integral components of the information management system. We have existing expertise for pgplot and similar visualization tools. Using these kinds of tools, for which we have source and with which we are familiar, will result in easier and faster development.
The ESO "rtd" image tool is written using Tcl and Tk, and is already proving a very valuable prototyping and design base. This tools has many superior features suitable for use with guider images and possibly for quick-look reduction. It should be easily interfaced with the database, since a Tk interpreter has already been built incorporating both the ESO rtd extensions and the sybtcl (Sybase) interface extensions. This is one concrete example of a freely available source code which the project should consider adopting/adapting rather than starting from scratch; portions of the IRAF source code may also be very useful.
In summary, the project is already well provided with existing, freely inheritable code which can be adopted wholesale or used as a starting point for DEIMOS modules.
de@ucolick.org