This allows considerable flexibility for the user to connect to and disconnect from any test point without affecting the hardware and low level software configuration. It does mean that, at any given moment, most data are either ignored or greatly decimated in time before being looked at. Some tuning of the system will be required to avoid a significant processor load at the hardware connections. We have all heard discussions about reusing software effort from one telescope to the next, but this has worked only in the very few cases where the goals, time scales, and communication proximity of two or more groups have been well matched. Let me finish up with a few thoughts on this from our design experience.
Every astronomical telescope is different for very good reasons.
Attempts to hide these differences will usually hide the strengths of an instrument and make it more difficult for the observer to understand the telescope system. A good user interface should be informative, not an abstraction to some universal instrument. We are pleased with the design and code structure that has emerged from the GBT effort. Within the GBT effort this has made building user interfaces to individual parts of the system much easier because the connections are all the same. Only the setup parameters are different.