Restful API for ECS data

This document describes the project that I have carried out as part of my Studentship at CERN. The idea behind it was to develop a RESTful API in order to easily access LHCb's Experiment Control System (ECS). LHCbs ECS is based on the SCADA WinCC OA and the JCOP (Joint COntrol Project) tools. WinCC OA data archival is done on an ORACLE database which can be easily accessed from the Control System UIs. However it is often useful to use this data from other external tools, such as scripts, and not have to go through the ECS to get this data. This project provides a solution to that. A RESTful API was developed to access the data directly from the ORACLE database and provide it to the user as a JSON object, which can then be easily used in user scripts. The API provides several filters, such as filter by element name and a time-range. Django was selected as the back-end.