Discovery Channel Telescope software key technologies

The Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) is a 4.3-meter astronomical research telescope being built in northern Arizona as a partnership between Discovery Communications and Lowell Observatory. The project software team has designed and partially implemented a component-based system. We describe here the key features of that design (state-based components that respond to signals) and detail specific implementation technologies we expect to be of most interest: examples of the Command Pattern, State Pattern, and XML-based configuration file handling using LabVIEW classes and shared variables with logging and alarming features.