The ALICE detector control system

ALICE is one of the six currently installed experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland). The experiment saw its first particles during the commissioning of the LHC accelerator in 2008 and is now preparing for the first physics runs foreseen for the autumn of 2009. The experiment is composed of a large number of sub-detectors, each with up to 15 different subsystems that need to be controlled and operated in an efficient and reliable way. For this purpose, a Detector Control System (DCS) has been developed based on latest technologies and using new and innovative approaches. The DCS system has been used with success during the commissioning of the individual detectors as well as during the cosmic runs and the LHC injection tests that were carried out in 2008. This paper gives an overview of the control system and it describes the architecture, the tools and the components that have been used to build it. Examples of technical implementations are given and new trends and techniques used in the system are highlighted.