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Reference

This is the formal-specification corner of the documentation. It describes the three machine-facing surfaces of Cloud-Native DCS exactly as they behave: the REST API exposed by the gateway, the dcs CLI, and the Structured Text language used inside SFC actions and transitions. The goal here is precision and completeness for lookup, so it is deliberately narrow. Teaching lives in Explanation.

What you won't find here, and where to go instead:

  • Definitions of terms (ISA-88, Kubernetes, OPC UA vocabulary) → Terminology, the project glossary.
  • Concepts and mental models (how parameter binding works, why alarms and interlocks differ) → Explanation.
  • Step-by-step procedures (run a batch, author a recipe, deploy a cluster) → Batch Operations and Platform Administration.

The three sections below are the whole of Reference, and that focus is deliberate.

Sections

  • REST API — endpoints exposed by the gateway, request and response schemas, and authentication. A CI check (make lint-docs-api-reference) fails the build if a documented route drifts from what the gateway actually registers. A reviewed allowlist tracks the registered routes not yet documented (reconciliation under #357).
  • CLI — the dcs subcommands, their flags, and their output formats. The CLI is the recommended way to drive the system, so this is the primary catalog of what it can do.
  • Structured Text — the IEC 61131-3 ST language as implemented by the SFC and recipe interpreters: the full set of supported operators, types, and built-in functions. Anything not listed here is rejected at parse time, so the list is exhaustive.
  • Phases — SFC chart syntax, transition evaluation order, and execution semantics.
  • API Reference (CRDs) — the same gateway API, with CRDs documented in the schema reference.
  • Compliance — traceability matrices mapping these reference surfaces to standards (ISA-88, 21 CFR Part 11, etc.).