6 EVALUATION AND OUTLOOK

In the previous sections I described how service observing is prepared and performed at the APEX telescope. The implemented observing submission facility, together with the observing database and the TWiki project pages, represent an efficient tool to manage scientific observations in service observing mode.

• Only products are used in the implementation which are freely available. This includes the programming languages and their interpreters (Perl, JavaScript, PHP, TCL) and the software components (Apache Webserver, TWiki, mySQL).
• The system is easy to use for the project PI and the APEX staff. No additional software installations are necessary. The submission of project information and the progress monitoring are all accessed through a standard webbrowser.
• The project submission facility was completely developed within the APEX Science Operations group. It can therefore be easily maintained, extended and modified by the APEX staff. This is of importance considering that APEX will continue to expand its suite of receivers and available observing techniques.
• With the automatic creation of setup and observing macros by the submission facility, as well as database entries and observing logs by the APEX control system, the workload on APEX staff is siginificantly reduced. This frees manpower to perform other observatory duties.

It must be noted that the whole system is under constant development. Improvements planned for the future include a better interconnection between the various components, in order to reduce redundancy and to further automatize the observing process.