Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Generic control system – apparatus or process – Having operator control interface
Reexamination Certificate
2000-06-20
2003-05-27
Gordon, Paul P. (Department: 2121)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Generic control system, apparatus or process
Having operator control interface
C700S017000, C700S020000, C709S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06571140
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
A. Technical Field
The present invention relates to systems providing for personalized, distributed, portable real time data acquisition and control, and more particularly to a service oriented environment for managing and controlling such systems.
B. Background of the Invention
Real-time systems are necessary where there is a need to guarantee real-time response to achieve a required quality of service of various underlying devices, communications networks, operating systems, middleware components and application components. Thus, real-time systems are widely applied to diverse applications domains such as manufacturing, facilities management, power systems management, financial analysis systems, and telecommunications.
The complexity of real-time systems arises from the need to respond to concurrent events occurring within a single application (or within multiple applications) at the same time. Also, a real-time system must provide some way of managing configuration management, fault management, static and dynamic scheduling, and fault tolerance. However, some applications may be hard real-time applications and others soft real-time applications. This results in increased complexity in managing and correlating data and information generated by the different systems into a single coherent system model.
A common strategy for implementing a real-time system is through a hierarchical architecture, where the system is separated into control, supervisory and management layers. The control layer is generally hard real-time in nature, whereas the supervisory and management layers may have decreasing needs for strict guarantee of time, and in many cases are implemented in software.
Hierarchical real-time architecture systems are increasingly being implemented using the client-server model, in which the centralized database stores real time data and acts as a server to graphical user interface clients. Information is transferred from the control network to the real-time database through an input/output server.
One example of such a hierarchical real-time system is a Supervisory and Control Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. In conventional SCADA systems, the real time data is captured from external sensors, control devices, or applications, and is logged to a centralized database. In response, controls on workstations are executed to manage the remote devices. All actions are performed from a centralized location. Basic control functions include alarm, trend, scan, and status operations.
One problem with conventional SCADA systems is that they are completely centralized. In a client-server system, all of the remote data information is loaded up into the central database, and then remote clients access the system. A problem with this design is degraded performance due to the single point of access, as many remote clients attempt to access the real time data through the single database server. This conventional design thus induces a scalability problem which limits the number of concurrent users.
One solution then is to use multiple real time databases, which partition the data being gathered according to geographic, management, or functional criteria. The problem here is configuration management. Traditionally, configuration is done by mapping input and output points to the database fields. If there are multiple databases, then the system designer has to change the mapping of the remote sensors to the databases, and maintain these mappings over a large number of remote devices and databases. Changes in partitioning of data induce further configuration maintenance. In addition, multiple, partitioned databases make it very difficult to introduce new types of data into the database configuration, and provide for new mappings.
Another solution is an object-oriented framework for the development of personalized workflow applications that provide real time functionality, while maintaining scalability to any number of users, and integration with existing legacy application systems. However, such solutions require that the users model up front, the environment of the real-time devices that need to be monitored and/or controlled.
This can be better understood with the help of an example. Such solutions involved the system administrator/user defining the data objects and their logical relationships at a prior time, where the data objects and their relationships preferably corresponded to the logical or physical organization of devices and in the system being modeled. An example of such a system is shown in
FIG. 1A
, where there is shown a set of data objects in an object server. A top level parent data object is defined to represent a building, here Building Center, which two floors, represented by the data objects of 1
st
Floor, and 2
nd
Floor. Each of these data objects has further data objects representing different rooms, Room
1
and Room
2
. Each Room data object then has both leaf data objects such as Temperature and Ventilation System, and a parent data object Light Control which itself has leaf data objects for two different Light Banks. This organization of data objects preferably represents the actual building being modeled. When the data objects are created, the building is therefore virtually “reconstructed.”
Further, addressing of data objects in the object server is preferably provided by hierarchical naming. Each data object is addressed by its path in the object server. For example, the temperature of Room
1
of 1
st
Floor is accessed by “Building Center.1
st
Floor.Room
1
.Temperature.” Addressing of data objects may also be done with variables. For example, a presentation cell
150
,
160
,
170
or
180
in
FIG. 1B
may access any of the leaf data objects of Room
1
by addressing “Building Center.1
st
Floor.Room 1.x”, where x is a variable used to select which leaf data object to obtain. Likewise, any address component can be replaced by a variable. When an address of a data object is resolved, the object server obtains the value of the data object using the index and size parameters stored in the underlying leaf data objects.
In the above example, the server would need to be taken off-line and reconfigured, and then taken back up again, every time that a new object is introduced, or every time that some attribute of an object is modified/added. Thus such systems are problematic in that such modifications must be made by the system administrator/user with the server off-line. Thus such a system does not provide real-time data at the time that such modifications are being made.
FIG. 1B
depicts such a system by which objects corresponding to real time devices, and their attributes corresponding to different real time data available from those real time devices, are represented and/or updated on presentation cells
302
on the client device.
FIG. 1B
shows that an object
100
, having “n” attributes, is created on the server side of the system. Each data attribute
110
,
120
,
130
, and
140
, has its own address. That is, as described above, only the naming structure in such a system is hierarchical. In actuality, data attributes
110
,
120
,
130
, and
140
have a flat structure. That is, there is no hierarchy employed in the data structure, and each attribute has a separate address on the server side. Each data attribute
110
,
120
,
130
, and
140
is entirely self-contained. The object does not have an address of its own in the system.
Via the network, a copy of the object
100
A is created on the client device. Further, a copy is also made of the addresses for each data attribute
110
A,
120
A,
130
A, and
140
A. The client device includes presentation cells
150
,
160
,
170
and
180
. Each of these presentation cells
150
,
160
,
170
and
180
subscribes to a data attribute
110
A,
120
A,
130
A and
140
A. Based on the addresses of each data attribute
110
A,
120
A,
130
A and
140
A, the presentation cells
150
,
160
,
170
and
180
can access the values of the data attributes that they subscribe to.
In such a system, the user of th
Gunasekera M. V. Priyantha
Gunasingham Haritharan
Liyanarachchi Rohana
Wewalaarachchi Bandu J.
Eutech Cybernetics Pte Ltd.
Glenn Michael A.
Glenn Patent Group
Gordon Paul P.
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