New Features

• Native support of OPC UA

• Support of TAI for timestamps

• Integration with a database for more than 32 items history for an attribute
  

• Fully Java BACI support

• Fully Python BACI support

• Structure BACI properties (even if basic / with limitations)

• Simpler CDB: The CDB XML interface feels very clumsy and not well documented. Is there a way to give beginners a simpler file based CDB for testing which is maybe based on someting like YAML, TOML, JSON, INI or so? I guess the XML was chosen, so that the schemata can be validated, but is that something beginners even need?

• Add security features: 

  • Authentication and authorization

  • Session binding
    

  • Encryption

  • ...

Features that could be improved 

ACS shipping 

• Slim-down ACS dependencies - e.g. Python, Python Libraries, ...ACS & Python

• Can we get ACS to use the System Python instead of shipping their own

• Use stdlib Python logging, while ACS just hooks an "ACSHandler" into the stdlib python
• Enumerations in IDL, they do not get properly translated into Python Enums
  

ACS tools

• getTemplate improvement: The interface of the "getTemplate" CLI tool is very strange. No tab completion, no help, a GUI, which is actually a commandline in disguise... strange.

Performance enhancement

• "acsStart" and "acsStop" take forever. This should not need so long. Can we improve that? I was told this is due to a bunch of timeouts strewn all over the ACS codebase, which are not necessary.
  
• "getDynamicComponent" is a blocking call, that waits for the remote component to be actually loaded. This is not necessary, it could just create the "objref" and return right away indepnend on how long the component needs to start. Can we fix that?
  
• Better handling of attributes subscription, particularly when client disconnect

Features that may  exist but not known or documented, or not exist yet

• How can we get the contents of the "acscommandcenter" in a PySimpleClient? In particular, how can we start containers, stop containers, check which containers are running, from a PySimpleClient?

ACS technologies you'd think needs a replacement (please indicate the reason: obsolescence, security, ...)

• DDS (see yesterday discussion)
• Old-style makefile
• Use of modern unit-test frameworks instead of TAT
• Not urgent, but alternatives to CORBA should be studied 

Enhancing the ACS experience 

1. Better documentation
2. Means of communication - Slack, Ticketing, ...
3. More frequent community calls 
4. Better and more sophisticated examples