A modern digital light microscopy workstation with its software as provided by the manufacturer is hardly able to fulfill every single customer requirement. There is a need to (i) seamlessly integrate a software package into a given workflow, (ii) to combine software packages. ZEN 2 offers an TCP/IP concept which allows the skilled programmer to integrate the ZEN software in his workflow independent of operating system and software languages or development packages. Thus the TCP/IP concept allows you combine ZEN functionality with any software on any platform.
There are two general situations which are interesting for programmers. First, programmers use the TCP/IP concept locally on one computer. As ZEN is running on Windows the client program runs on the same computer and also uses the Windows operating system. In this situation the TCP/IP concept is used primarily as an interface. The TCP/IP interface is a good alternative to the COM interface that ZEN offers in addition. Please keep in mind that the COM interface cannot be addressed from one .Net application to another. This has been blocked by Microsoft for whatever reason. As ZEN blue is written under .Net your application will fail to use the ZEN-COM interface in case your software is written under .Net as well. The TCP/IP interface is better tested and a lot easier to use than the COM interface.
The second interesting scenario is to drive ZEN from another computer which has an arbitrary operating system and any programming language. In this case it is clear that both computers have to be connected via a TCP/IP network and as ZEN brings his own TCP/IP listener the client software must also have access to a library that allows sending and receiving messages via TCP/IP. In this case some additional networking knowledge concerning firewalls and allowed ports etc. within a company or facility network is necessary to successfully establish a connection between computers.
Our practical experience showed that this TCP/IP approach works very well when software packages are combined that have very little in common. A typical example is a workflow that consists of several steps managed by an established workflow software. Generally the operating systems and/or the software technologies do not match. Usually integration of ZEN into this workflow can be done with a minimum of effort by using the TCP/IP capabilities of ZEN.
Why are the efforts of integration done with a minimum amount of time? There are two reasons for that. First of all TCP/IP is a fundamental technology that is widely known and used. Second, the commands sent to ZEN driving the imaging software are the same that are used within a macro. Therefore the commands can be easily tested within the Macro Environment before they are used to send them via TCP/IP. In addition to that several macros can be written and saved within the ZEN Macro Environment. Each of these macros can be executed via TCP/IP by sending ‘run macroname’.
In most cases this very easy approach already fulfills the needs of customers to acquire an image and to do image processing or analysis afterwards. Typically the macro saves the data to a special location where the next step of the workflow expect them to be. In the following workflow step otherprocessing and analysis software packages may work with the data or a feeder is driven by the workflow system to bring new images to the microscope.
