[evla-sw-discuss] Discovering BLBP Availability

[David Harland]

Observers, either directly or indirectly, will specify the /quantity/ of 
baseline board pairs to use for each of their subbands.  SSS software 
then determines which BLBPs to assign to these subbands and communicates 
the specific BLBP allocations to the configuration mapper via the VCI.  
The software that performs the allocation should be made aware of any 
missing or inoperable BLBPs.

Is there a means now, or envisioned for the near future, where software 
can discover the operational state of the BLBPs by quadrant and BLBP ID?

Some possibilities:

   1. A VCI query

   2. The EVLA parameters database

   3. A text file (xml, java properties, some other easy-to-parse
      format) at a known location