No further development of SPICE

• Cause of SiLA 2 -> Much easier standard. Should not need a base-library like SPICE anymore. This makes SPICE obsolet.
• Keeping SPICE on GitHub, cause it's still a very good and stable base-library for SiLA 1.3.08

SPICE stands for SiLA Provider Implementation Community Equipment.

SiLA is the emerging vendor-independent global standard to connect laboratory equipment and software via Ethernet and WLAN (www.sila-standard.org). In a SiLA lab automation system, laboratory instruments act as "SiLA Service Providers". These can be addressed by process management software, or "SiLA Service Consumers".

SPICE is a publicly available, open source software base to create your own "SiLA Service Provider". With SPICE it is easy to make your own instrument SiLA compatible with a SiLA interface! SPICE can also be used as "SiLA Converter" to equip legacy devices with a SiLA interface.

An implementation based on SPICE is called a SPI (SiLA Provider Implementation), such as the SPI_Multidrop, which is also available and open source within this repository.

SPICE was developed by the ILT Institute for Lab Automation and Mechatronics in Rapperswil (Switzerland). It was commissioned by Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. in Allschwil (Switzerland), and it is made freely available to the lab automation community through GitHub.

##History

• 2014.10 - It was initially developed to make Multidrop dispensers SiLA compatible (all historic versions up to the Multidrop Combi)
• 2015.09 - A software structure redesign was done, to get more flexibility with the core part of the SiLA interface. SPICE was born.
• 2015.11 - Publication of SPICE on GitHub
• 2017.07 - Decision: No further development of SPICE

SPICE is provided under the Boost Software License. SPICE is not and has no intention to be part of the Boost libraries. It just uses this very open license that encourages both commercial and non-commercial use.

Boost Software License - Version 1.0 - August 17th, 2003

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by this license (the "Software") to use, reproduce, display, distribute, execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to do so, all subject to the following:

The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer, must be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and all derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative works are solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by a source language processor.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Source: http://www.boost.org/users/license.html

As one of the unique open source libraries SPICE is written in C++. This is to get a better possibility for device manufacturer to integrate a SiLA Interface within their devices.

• C++ 11
• Platform supporting multiple threads

SPICE 1.0 implements the SiLA DCDIS 1.3.08 specification.

Standard:

• Full implementation of the state machine
• Automatic command handling (synchronous responses, get parameters and check limits, error handling communication, response communication)
• Command buffering supported
• Parallel command execution supported
• Implementation of all mandatory commands
• Implementation of some common commands
• Automatic WSDL-file generation
• WSDiscovery supported

Programming:

• Modular structure.
• Modules are just connected over interfaces and base classes.
• Possibility to replace the EthernetServer and XMLParser with other implementations based on other libraries. (Currently available implementation uses the POCO-libraries).
• Possibility to replace the Core with a slim version without features like command buffering and parallel command execution. (Not available yet. Could be generated as there are enough requests)
• Base classes for commands. You just have to derivate and implement the methods.
• Classes for DataTypes and DataSets to easy work with parameters and configuration sets.

Multiple devices:

• One application can have multiple instances of the core to provide more than one SiLA device. They have to differ over there URI-Paths. This feature is interesting for SiLAConverters with legacy devices to support more than one device with only one SiLAConverter hardware.
• One Core can be registered at different EthernetServer to support multiple ports or HTTP and HTTPS at the same time.

Organizational:

• Template project available
• Real implementation as example available (SPI_Multidrop)
• Tested with different Process Management Systems

• Autoreset after timeout
• DataEvent generation
• Special DataTypes

• Additional EthernetServer and XMLParser implementations based on other libraries to get a choice.
• EthernetServer with HTTPS-support.
• Optional extension field to error events.
• Better / easier ResponseData generation.
• General logging system

• SPI_Multidrop
• SPI_DeviceSimulator