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Abstract: The development of large detector systems for the LHC experimental apparatus induced to consider the problem of monitoring and controlling the different sub-detectors under a new perspective. On one side the necessity of a powerful tool which permits to a relatively experienced user to safely manage the detector for all the standard purposes and inform on the detector status and quality of the data pushed the LHC scientific community to adopt a common development platform and as much as possible uniform front ends. On the other side the monitoring of short- and long-term behavior of unprecedented complex detectors systems built by thousands of independent detectors offered a problem and an opportunity: the problem is in terms of careful and optimized design of the control system combining a rational use of software and database tools and all the experience accumulated previously in the long ageing studies which evidenced case by case the main source of problems and the ideal tools to control them; the opportunity consists in the availability of such a statistically large number of detectors which would expand the chances to understand deeply the systematic aspects of the detector physics hardly reachable in small detector sample tests even though on a long-time scale. Here we will present the architecture, the present status and the perspective applications and potentialities of the ATLAS RPC detector control system in view of the forthcoming startup of the ATLAS experiment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]