Patent Grant
9760651
The invention relates generally to process control systems and, more particularly, the invention relates to the use of web services to facilitate communications between a process control system or plant and a plurality of data consuming applications.
Process control systems, like those used in chemical, petroleum or other processes, typically include one or more centralized process controllers communicatively coupled to at least one host or operator workstation and to one or more field devices via analog, digital or combined analog/digital buses. The field devices, which may be, for example valves, valve positioners, switches and transmitters (e.g., temperature, pressure and flow rate sensors), perform functions within the process such as opening or closing valves and measuring process parameters. The process controller receives signals indicative of process measurements made by the field devices and/or other information pertaining to the field devices, uses this information to implement a control routine and then generates control signals which are sent over the buses or other communication lines to the field devices to control the operation of the process. Information from the field devices and the controllers may be made available to one or more applications executed by the operator workstation to enable an operator to perform desired functions with respect to the process, such as viewing the current state of the process, modifying the operation of the process, etc.
Typically, a process control system operates within a business enterprise that may include several process control plants, component and/or service suppliers and customers, all of which may be distributed throughout a large geographic area, or in some cases, throughout the world. The process control plants, suppliers and customers may communicate with each other using a variety of communication media and technologies or platforms such as, for example, the Internet, satellite links, ground-based wireless transmissions, telephone lines, etc. Of course, the Internet has become a preferred communication platform for many business enterprises because the communications infrastructure is established, making the communication infrastructure costs for an enterprise near zero, and the technologies used to communicate information via the Internet are well-understood, stable, secure, etc.
Each process control plant within an enterprise may include one or more process control systems as well as a number of other business-related or information technology systems, which are needed to support or maintain or which are complementary to the operation of the process control systems. In general, the information technology systems within a process control plant may include manufacturing execution systems such as, for example, a maintenance management system and may also include enterprise resource planning systems such as, for example, scheduling, accounting and procurement systems. Although these information technology systems may be physically located within or near a plant, in some cases a few or possibly all of these systems may be remotely located with respect to the plant and may communicate with the plant using the Internet or any other suitable communication link. In any event, to improve or optimize the overall operation of an enterprise, some recent development efforts have been directed to facilitating more rapid and efficient communications and enabling more complete integration between process control systems and information technology systems within an enterprise.
Each process control plant may also include user-interactive applications that may be executed on a server or workstation that is communicatively coupled to one or more servers, workstations, or other computers that coordinate or perform the activities of the process control system within the plant. Such user-interactive applications may perform campaign management functions, historical data management functions, asset management functions, batch management functions, etc. In addition, each of the process control systems within a plant may include process management applications that may, for example, manage the communications of and provide information relating to alarm and/or other process events, provide information or data relating to the condition of the process or processes being performed by the process control plant, provide information or data relating to the condition or performance of equipment associated with the process control plant, etc. In particular, process management applications may include vibration monitoring applications, real-time optimization applications, expert system applications, predictive maintenance applications, control loop monitoring applications, or any other applications related to controlling, monitoring and/or maintaining a process control system or plant. Still further, a process control plant or enterprise may include one or more communication applications that may be used to communicate information from the process control system or plant to a user via a variety of different communication media and platforms. For example, these communication applications may include email applications, paging applications, voice messaging applications, file-based applications, etc., all of which may be adapted to send information via a wireless or hardwired media to a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a personal data assistant, a cellular phone or pager, or any other type of device or hardware platform.
Generally speaking, the effective integration of information technology systems, user-interactive applications, process management applications and communication applications has been extremely difficult, if not impossible, because these systems and applications are typically distributed widely throughout an enterprise and, in some cases, are widely geographically dispersed. Additionally, these systems and applications typically require the development of a custom communication interface or software driver that enables the different systems and applications to communicate with each other. As a result, when any system, application, device or component within the enterprise changes due to, for example, a firmware upgrade, device replacement, etc., the custom communication driver or interface for that system, device or component may also have to be changed. Obviously, the large number of custom drivers needed results in a lot of time-consuming driver maintenance, which results in high enterprise maintenance costs. Furthermore, adding a system or application to an enterprise or a process control plant often requires an enormous programming effort because a plurality of custom communication drivers or interfaces may have to be developed to enable the new system or application to communicate with the other systems and applications within the enterprise. Thus, systems that use such custom communication interfaces are not very flexible or scalable and do not facilitate, for example, the integration of a process control system with other systems and applications, which may be provided by the manufacturer of the process control system or which may be provided by a third party manufacturer or developer.
In addition to the difficulty associated with enabling communications between the large number of different systems, applications and services that make up an enterprise, there has been a pervasive problem associated with enabling system users or operators to effectively view or monitor selected enterprise information that pertains specifically to their role within the enterprise and/or their personal preferences. For example, an engineer may be concerned with the operation of a particular control loop within a particular portion of a process plant, whereas an executive officer may be concerned with overall production output of a particular plant or plants and typically would not want to see any details related to control loops, devices, etc.
Still another difficulty associated with present systems is the inability of these systems to enable system users or operators to configure and/or add applications, services or systems to the enterprise or process control plant. To the contrary, these present systems typically require the services of a skilled programmer to configure and/or integrate an application, service or system that has not been previously configured or integrated. For example, the skilled programmer may have to have intimate knowledge of how the application, service or system to be configured and/or integrated operates and may have to generate a configuration routine or routines and one or more custom communication drivers or interfaces that enable that system, application or service to communicate with other systems, applications or services within the enterprise.
Some recent development efforts have focused on using extensible markup languages to facilitate communications between the different applications, systems and services that make up an enterprise. It is generally known that extensible markup languages such as, for example, XML, may be used to enable different systems, applications and/or services to be loosely coupled to each other so that each of the different systems, applications and/or services do not have to have intimate knowledge of how the other systems, applications and/or services function to communicate with them. Some recently developed systems may combine the use of XML with network communication protocols such as simple object access protocol (SOAP) and network transport protocols such as, for example, hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) to enable these loosely coupled services, applications, and/or systems to communicate via a network such as, for example, the Internet.
Recently developed products that use XML, SOAP, and/or HTTP, etc. to enable communications between a variety of systems, applications and services within an enterprise typically only provide limited information exchange between information technology systems, limited configuration capabilities, limited scalability or flexibility to add services, systems or applications, and limited information viewing capabilities. Lighthammer Software Development Corporation markets one such commercially available product as Illuminator™. In general, many of these recently developed products are commonly referred to as portal applications (as is the Illuminator™ product). Such portal applications enable selective viewing of information centrally gathered and processed by a server or the like from a plurality of systems, applications and/or services within an enterprise.
While these recently developed portal applications and, in particular the Illuminator product, may facilitate communications between different systems, applications and services within an enterprise, they typically do not enable a user or system operator to easily add a system, service or application to the enterprise. Nor do these recently developed portal applications enable a system user or operator to selectively display information gathered from a plurality of other applications, services and systems within the enterprise based on a detailed profile associated with that particular user or operator. Instead, these portal applications merely enable a user to select one from a relatively few predetermined information display configurations that are based on organizational role or department such as, for example, engineering, management, manufacturing, etc.
Additionally, these known portal applications (e.g., the Illuminator product) typically collect or aggregate enormous amounts of data from various data providing entities within a process plant, regardless of whether or not any user or operator desires to view such data or otherwise make use of such data. For example, these known portal applications may centrally aggregate all available data within a database of a server or other computer system that is communicatively coupled to the various data sources. The central server or other computer system may then perform various types of analyses on the aggregated data and may send some or all of the collected data and analysis results to a viewing application that displays information to a user. Unfortunately, the data aggregation techniques used by these known portal applications results in the transmission of an enormous amount of data, which may or may not be needed by a user or users, via a communication network such as, for example, the Internet, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for data to be sent in a real-time or otherwise timely manner.
Furthermore, because the server performing the data aggregation also performs any needed analysis on the aggregated data, a substantial amount of the processing resources of the server may be consumed by such analysis, regardless of whether the analysis results are requested or needed by a user. Still further, because known portal applications centrally aggregate data to be displayed or otherwise conveyed to users, a communications or power failure within the server performing the aggregation function may result in a catastrophic failure that completely prevents the exchange of information between systems, applications and/or services within the enterprise until power and/or communications to the central server are restored, all data has been recollected or aggregated and any needed analysis has be re-executed. In other words, the system architecture used by these known portal applications, which uses a central sever for data aggregation and analysis purposes, does not provide a robust environment for the integration of the systems, applications and/or services within an enterprise.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a method of communicating process control information may send a message containing the process control information from a first web service associated with a process control system to an information server. The method may use a router within the information server to process the message to determine a destination for the process control information contained therein. Additionally, the method may send the process control information to a second web service associated with the destination and a data consuming application.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a system for communicating process control information may include a first web service associated with a process control system and a second web service associated with a data consuming application. The system may also include an information server communicatively coupled to the first and second web services via a network. The information server may be adapted to receive a message containing the process control information from the first web service and to send the process control information via the network to the second web service to be used by the data consuming application.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, a method of communicating process control information may send a request for the process control information to a first web service associated with a process control system and may select only the process control information from process control information available to the first web service based on the request for the process control information. The method may also send the process control information to an information server and may send the process control information from the information server to a second web service associated with a data consuming application.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, a method of communicating process control information may send a first message containing the process control information from a first web service to an information server in response to a change in the process control information. The method may also process the first message within the information server to determine a second web service to which the process control information is to be sent and may send a second message containing the process control information from the information server to the second web service.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, a system for communicating process control information may include a computer readable medium and software stored on the computer readable medium and adapted to be executed by a processor. When executed, the software may cause the processor to establish connections with a plurality of web services via a network and to communicate the process control information from a first one of the plurality of web services to a second one of the plurality of web services via the network based on routing information and in response to one of a change in the process control information and a scheduled request for the process control information.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, a method of communicating process control information may receive user profile information from a graphical user interface and may receive web service configuration information from the graphical user interface. In addition, the method may store the user profile information and the web service configuration information in a database, may request the process control information from a web service associated with a process control system based on the user profile information and the web service configuration information and may send the process control information to the graphical user interface.
The web services-based communication system and technique described herein may be used within a process control system or plant to facilitate the communication and viewing of information associated with the process control system or plant. More specifically, the web services-based communication system and technique described herein includes a communications engine that performs message routing, scheduling and configuration functions for a plurality of clients or web-services. Additionally, the web services-based communication system and technique described herein includes a graphical user interface that enables one or more users to configure and/or add web-services to the system and to create a highly personalized profile that causes the communications engine to route selected process control information and other information to be displayed to the user via the graphical user interface in a manner desired by the user. The web services, the communications engine and the graphical user interface may communicate with one another via a network such as, for example, the Internet using an extensible markup language (e.g., XML) or any other similar language that enables applications, services and/or systems to communicate with one another without requiring the development of custom communication interfaces or drivers.
Generally speaking, the web-services described herein may include data services or sources and data subscribers or consumers. For example, data services or sources may be process control systems or applications, asset management systems or applications, equipment condition monitoring systems or applications, diagnostic systems or applications, or any other system or application that acquires or generates information or data associated with the operation of a process control system or plant. On the other hand, data subscribers or consumers may include user-interactive applications such as, for example, campaign management systems or applications, computerized maintenance management systems or applications, and may also include communication systems or applications such as, for example, paging systems or applications, email systems or applications, file generations systems or applications, etc.
In any event, each of the data services and data consumers may be an application or system that includes a web services interface. As is well known, a web services interface may use an extensible markup language such as XML in conjunction with a messaging protocol such as, for example, simple object access protocol (SOAP) and a communications transport protocol such as, for example, hypertext transport protocol (HTTP). Because web services are somewhat generic in nature (i.e., the behavior or characteristics of the communications via a web server interface are independent of any underlying application or system), data services and data consumers can be easily connected to (i.e., communicate with) the communications engine without having to create any custom communication interfaces, as typically was the case with prior systems. Additionally, the communications engine may be easily adapted to discover or find (either automatically or at the direction of a user) web services that are available for connection to the communications engine. For example, the communications engine may use a web services discovery tool or service such as, for example, universal discovery description and integration (UDDI), or any other type of web services discovery tool or service to identify available web services.
Still further, the web services-based communication system and technique described herein provides a system architecture that results in efficient and robust data collection, data analysis and data communication. In particular, the communications engine may request data from the data services as it is needed by the communications engine. Alternatively, one or more of the data services may be configured to asynchronously notify the communications engine as new data or information becomes available. In either case, efficient use of communications resources (e.g., communication links, processing capacity within the communications engine, etc.) may be achieved by the system and technique described herein. In particular, only newly available and/or data needed by the communications engine is conveyed between the various data services and the communications engine, as opposed to collecting all available data from the data sources regardless of whether the data was needed, as was the case with prior systems.
Further, with the web services-based communication system and technique described herein, the data services may perform complex analyses and may communicate analysis results (in addition to raw data, if desired) to the communications engine and, in turn, to the graphical user interface and/or other data consumers. Thus, because the web services-based communication system and technique described herein is adapted to transmit only requested and/or newly available data and, if desired, only analysis results (as opposed to all data required to perform the analysis at a central location such as the communications engine or the graphical user interface application), the web services-based communication system and technique described herein facilitates highly efficient use of available communication network bandwidth.
The web services-based communication system and technique described herein also provides a high degree of data robustness. In particular, each of the web services may be responsible for data backup, storage of data history, etc. As a result, a communications and/or power failure at the communications engine and/or the graphical user interface will not result in the catastrophic loss of data, and recovery of the system can be quickly and easily accomplished upon restoration of power and/or communications to the communications engine and/or the graphical user interface. Likewise, failure of a particular web service will not result in a catastrophic failure of the entire system, and when the failed web service recovers, the system can easily begin communicating with that web service without having to be reconfigured, restarted, etc.
Now referring to
Each of the data services 102-106 may include field devices, controllers, workstations, etc. that are communicatively coupled via one or more communication networks and/or other types of communication links. Each of the data services 102-106 may perform process control activities such as, for example, execution of control loops, may perform diagnostic activities, may perform asset management activities, etc. for a collection of equipment or devices associated with a particular process plant or portion of a process plant. Further, each of the data services 102-106 may also perform data historian functions, may include redundant or failsafe devices, may perform data analysis activities, all of which are generally well known in the art and, thus, are not described in greater detail herein.
Preferably, the data services 102-106 include respective web services communication interfaces 122-126, which enable the data services 102-106 to communicate within the system 100 as web services when connected to the network 120. The web services communication interfaces 122-126 may be implemented using XML messages that have been formatted using SOAP, or any other desired message protocol, and which have been encapsulated for transmission using a network transport protocol such as, for example, HTTP. Web services, generation of XML messages, SOAP and HTTP are all well known and, thus, are not described in greater detail herein.
In general, the data consumers 108-112 are systems or applications that perform activities or functions that consume process control data and/or which convey data or information provided by the data services 102-106 to system users or operators. One or more of the data consumers 108-112 may perform primarily communication functions that can route data or information to system users or operators using a particular communication media and platform. For example, data may be delivered by one or more of the data consumers 108-112 using hardwired or wireless media and using any desired system or hardware platform such as, for example, a laptop, a personal data assistant, email, etc. Alternatively or additionally, one or more of the data consumers 108-112 may perform primarily user-interactive activities such as, for example, batch definition and campaign management activities and/or may perform other primarily business-related activities such as, for example, order processing activities, accounting activities, product shipping and administration activities, product inventory control activities, quality assurance activities, procurement activities, etc. As with the data services 102-106, the data consumers 108-112 also include respective web services communication interfaces 128-132, which enable the data consumers 108-112 to communicate as web services within the system 100.
As shown in
In general, the router 136 performs message routing functions that receive messages from one or more of the web services, which includes the data services 102-106 and the data consumers 108-112, coupled to the network 120 via the connections 142-152 and route these received messages to appropriate destinations, which may be any of the web services (e.g., the data services 102-106 and data consumers 108-112) coupled to the network 120. More specifically, the router 136 may function in a manner similar or identical to an XML transaction server. In particular, the router 136 may use input and output schemas in conjunction with business rules, data manipulations, etc., all of which may be stored in and retrieved from the database 138, or which may be provided by another one of the web services coupled to the network 120, to route XML messages received from one or more of the web services coupled to the network 120 to another one or ones of the web services.
By way of example, the data service 102 may generate alarm or alert information that needs to be conveyed to the data consumer 112, which may be a communication system or application such as an email system or application. When the alert or alarm information is generated, the data service 102 uses its web services interface 122 to wrap the alert or alarm information in an XML schema to form an XML message, encapsulates the XML message using HTTP and sends the XML message to the network 120. The network 120 uses the HTTP encapsulation to route the XML message, using known techniques, to an appropriate one of the data service connections 142-146 available within the information server 114. The communications engine 140 receives the XML message from the one of the data service connections 142-146 that received the XML message and the router 136 uses an appropriate input schema (retrieved from the database 138) to decode the XML message. The router 136 may then, based on the content of the decoded message and one or more rules and/or data manipulations, map the contents (or a portion of the contents) of the message to an appropriate output schema associated with the destination (i.e., the data consumer 112), which may also be retrieved from the database 138. The router 136 may then encapsulate the mapped alarm or alert message (which is also an XML message) using HTTP and may send the encapsulated message to the data consumer 112 via the one of the data consumer connections 148-152 associated with the data consumer 112 and the network 120 to the data consumer 112. The data consumer 112 then receives the alert or alarm information via its web services interface 132 and may generate an email message that conveys the alert or alarm information to one or more designated users.
Thus, the router 136 is adapted to process messages, which are preferably, but not necessarily, expressed using XML or some other extensible markup language, received from a plurality of web services such as, for example, data services, via a communication network and routes or sends these messages to other web services that are also coupled to the communication network. Because all of the data generation and data consuming applications or systems that make up the system 100 are configured to communicate as web services, the information server 114 and, more particularly, the communications engine 140, can dynamically establish communications with any of the data generation or consuming applications or systems by adding or removing connections (e.g., the connections 142-152) without having to generate any custom communication interfaces or drivers and without having to halt the operations of the communications engine 140 (i.e., connections to applications can be established without disturbing communications between already connected web services and the communications engine 140). To the contrary, because each of the data services 102-106 and each of the data consumers 108-112 includes a web services interface and because the communications engine 140 is adapted to communicate with web services, it is not necessary for the information server 114 or for any of the web services coupled to the network 120 to have any detailed knowledge about the operation of the systems or applications being performed by any of the other web services to enable information to be exchanged between the web services via the information server 114.
In general, the scheduler 134 performs scheduling functions that enable the communications engine 140 to periodically request information from one or more of the data services 102-106. More specifically, the scheduler 134 may establish periodic requests for information or data from one or more of the data services 102-106, particularly where the information requested is of a type that would not generate an event. For example, if one of the data consumers 108-112 periodically needs information or data such as a control loop value, which would not normally cause an alarm or alert, from one of the data services 102-106, the scheduler 136 may be configured to periodically send messages requesting the control loop value or data to the one or ones the data services 102-106. The one or ones of the data services 102-106 receiving the request may subsequently send the data to the information server 114 in the form of an HTTP encapsulated XML message, which may then be routed by the router 136 to the appropriate ones of the data consumers 108-112 via the network 120.
The discovery service 118 may also include a web services interface 154 that enables the discovery service 118 to communicate with the information server 114, the data services 102-106 and/or the data consumers 108-112, as desired. The discovery service 118 may be a web services directory or registry service such as, for example, UDDI or any other similar or different web services directory or registry. As is well known, UDDI enables a web service to discover and obtain interface and/or communications information about another web service, which may then be used by the discovering web service or server to automatically establish communications with the discovered web service.
The system 100 may use the discovery service 118 to automatically or dynamically establish communications between the information server 114, the data services 102-106 and the data consumers 108-112, without requiring intervention from a system user or operator, a programmer, etc. By way of example only, at initial start up or power up of the system 100, the information server 114 and, in particular the communications engine 140, may communicate with the discovery service 118 to determine what web services are coupled to the network 120 and available for use by the system 100. The communications engine 140 may store available web services and communications interface information pertaining to available web services in the database 138. The information related to available web services may then be automatically and periodically updated by the communications engine 140 so that if a web service becomes unavailable, becomes available, and/or if communications interface information relating to any available web service changes, such information may be reflected in the database 138 for use by the communications engine 140 in routing and scheduling communications.
Each of the web services that is discovered, licensed (if required) and coupled to the information server via the network 120, may have a unique service identifier (SID) associated therewith. In this manner, the communications engine 140 may store communications interface information and other information pertaining to each of the available web services in a table or any other data structure within the database 138. The table or other data structure may subsequently be used by the router 136 and the scheduler 134 to route messages received from particular services and to schedule information requests from particular services.
The graphical user interface 116, the operation of which is discussed in greater detail in connection with
In addition to user profile information, configuration information associated with each user may also be stored in the database 138. A user may interact with the graphical user interface 116 to establish the manner in which the user wants to view information from the data services 102-106 and the data consumers 108-112, the manner in which the user wants information to be conveyed between the various web services coupled to the network 120, etc. To store configuration information for each user, a table may be generated in the database 138 so that each user is assigned a unique identifier or a user ID (UID) and a user's desired configuration for each of the available web services is stored along with the UID and the SIDs of the services.
By way of example, when a user logs into the graphical user interface 116, they may be authenticated using their username and password. In turn, the username and password information may be used to create or may be associated with a security identifier (e.g., the UID). The graphical user interface 116 may send the UID for that user to the information server 114, which will then retrieve the profile and configuration information associated with that UID from the database 138. The profile and configuration information may then be used by the communications engine 140 to establish the manner in which messages will be routed, the manner in which the scheduler 134 requests information from the data services 102-106, the type and manner in which information will be displayed by the graphical user interface 116, etc. while that user (or at least that user's UID) remains in control of the graphical user interface 116.
While the graphical user interface 116 (and the software application or applications associated therewith) is depicted in
The system 200 shown in
The personal data assistant web service 214 may receive messages containing information from data sources such as the web services 202-206 and may convey information contained in these messages to one or more personal data assistant computers, each of which may be carried or operated by a different person or user. In this manner, a system user may, if desired, configure the system 200 to send selected detailed information about the operation of a process control plant or system including, for example, diagnostic information, advanced control and condition monitoring information, asset management information, or any other information to their personal data assistant computer.
The file system web service 216 may receive messages containing process control data, diagnostic data, etc. from one or more of the web services 202-206 via the information server 114 and the network 120 and may store the information contained therein in one or more data files, which may subsequently be accessed, transmitted, printed, displayed, etc.
The CMMS web service 212, the campaign management web service 218 and the business rules web service 220 may be characterized as user-interactive applications or services. The CMMS web service 212 may, for example, enables users to configure the type of and the manner in which alert or alarm information should be conveyed to them. Additionally, the CMMS web service 212 may perform functions that generate work orders (either in electronic or paper form) that may be printed or displayed at a central location such as, for example, a maintenance department within a process plant, that may be conveyed directly to the persons responsible for responding to the work orders, etc. Still further, the CMMS web service 212 may generate orders for replacement parts that may be needed to repair or otherwise maintain a process control plant associated with the system 200. The part orders generated by the CMMS web service 212 may, in turn, be sent in the form of HTTP encapsulated XML messages to a business system such as, for example, a procurement system (not shown) that is communicatively coupled to the network 120.
The campaign management web service 218 may include any desired campaign management application or applications that are used to define and manage the execution of one or more batch processes within a process control plant. The business rules web service 220 may include one or more applications that function to change the operating parameters of a process control plant or system based on data received from process control applications and/or business applications. Both campaign management applications and business rules applications are well known and, thus, are not described in greater detail herein.
It is important to recognize that data or information typically flows from web services such as the asset management web service 202, the advanced control and condition monitoring web service 204 and the diagnostics web service 206, all of which typically acquire data, analyze data and generate analysis results data, to primarily data consuming web services such as, for example, the email web service 208, the paging web service 210, the CMMS web service 212, the personal data assistant web service 214, the file system web service 216, the campaign management web service 218 and the business rules web service 220. However, any one of the web services 202-220, the discovery service 118 and the graphical user interface 116 may send messages or exchange information with one or more of the other web services 202-220, the discovery service 118 and the graphical user interface 116 via the network 120 and the information server 114.
In operation, the system 200 may initially not have knowledge of any of the web services 202-220, may not have any user configurations or profiles stored within the information server 114 and, thus, may not initially route any messages from any of the data sources (i.e., the web services 202-206) to any of the data consumers (i.e., the web services 208-220). The information server 114 may then use the discovery service 118 to discover each of the available web services 202-220, which are coupled to the network 120. In particular, the information server 114 may retrieve communications interface information (e.g., schema information, network address information, etc.) from the discovery service 118 and may store this information within its database 138 (
As described in greater detail in connection with
Of course, the graphical user interface 116 may include one or more security measures that prevent unauthorized users from obtaining detailed information about the system 200 from the information server 114 and from entering or modifying the configurations and/or profiles within the system 200. The system 200 may use one of more of these security measures to determine whether or not a person attempting to access the system 200 should be allowed access and, if access is granted, the extent of that access. In other words, some users may be granted more or greater access privileges than other users so that while one user may be able to view and/or modify any configuration and/or profile information associated with the system 200, another user or users may only be permitted to view selected information and may not be permitted to modify any configuration or profile information.
While the content and format of the information displayed within the graphical user interface 116 may vary as different users log into or use the graphical user interface 116, the various message routing configurations associated with the data consuming web services (e.g., the web services 208-220) remain active for each of the user profiles stored within the database 138 (
The embedded advanced control and condition monitoring block 254 may be implemented using a plurality of software routines or applications that process data and other information associated with the operation, condition, etc. of a process control system such as, for example the process control system 300 shown in
The web services block 256 may include an alarms and events interface block 260, a process condition monitoring block 262 and an equipment condition monitoring block 264, all of which may be communicatively coupled to respective web service listeners 266, 268 and 270. Additionally, the web services block 256 may also include a web service listener block 272 that is communicatively coupled directly to the process control subsystems block 252 as shown in
As described in more detail below, the web service listeners 266-272 receive incoming messages that contain requests for service, parse these incoming messages and dispatch the requests for service to appropriate methods available within the web services block 256. Preferably, but not necessarily, the web service listeners 266-272 receive service requests and also provide service responses. Still further, the listeners 266-272 may provide contracts and other documents associated with the web service or services in communicating with that listener. Additionally, the web service listeners 266-272 preferably, but do not necessarily, convey alarm and event data, process condition data and equipment condition data using XML.
The web services interface 258 manages communications between the various web services within the web services block 256 and the information server 114, which may communicate with a process control system via the web services interface block 258 as a web client. In general, the web services interface block 258 provides a hosting or web server environment (i.e., a common interface) that enables a plurality of relatively technically diverse information systems such as, for example, manufacturing execution systems, enterprise resource planning systems, etc., or any other system associated with a remotely situated process control plant, customer, supplier, etc., to send and receive process control information or data to the process control subsystems block 252 and the advanced embedded control and condition monitoring block 250. In particular, the web services interface 258 is adapted to listen for incoming HTTP requests, perform security checks involving user authentication/verification, look up connection information and dispatch authorized HTTP requests to establish a connection with an appropriate one of the web service listeners 266-272 available within the web services block 256, facilitate automatic recovery from service, hosting environment and system failures, provide administrative facilities for deploying, monitoring and controlling services and managing resources such as, for example, processes, threads and shared state on behalf of each service.
In response to HTTP-based requests, the web services interface 258 may authenticate the requesting entity (e.g., another other web service) as a proper client of the web services block 256. Client authentication may be based on an identity of a user (i.e., based on the UID and/or some other identifier), the identity of the requesting entity itself, a terminal location or any other suitable identification technique. If the requesting entity is authenticated as a proper client, the web services interface 258 establishes a connection with an appropriate one of the web service listeners 266-272 within the web services block 256. For example, in the case that the requesting entity is interested in device alarm or alert information, the web services interface 258 may establish a connection with a web service associated with the web service listener 266 and the alarms and events interface block 260. Once such a connection is established, any type of process control information accessible by the web service may be communicated between the requesting client and the process control system using HTTP packets containing XML formatted data.
When a device within the I/O subsystems block 250 generates a device alert or alarm such as, for example, a maintenance alert, the I/O subsystems block 250 sends this maintenance alert to the web services block 256 via the alarms and events interface 260. In turn, the web service associated with the web service listener 266 and the alarms and events interface 260 converts the received maintenance alert into an XML format and then sends the XML formatted alert information or data to the information server 114 via the network 120. Of course, as described above, appropriate input and output schemas need to be in place to properly convey the device alert information from the information server 114 to the appropriate data consuming applications or web services.
It should be recognized that the web services framework or architecture provided by the web services interface 258 and the web services block 256 enables any authenticated client to exchange information or data with the I/O subsystems block 250 and the process control subsystems block 252 using XML-based communications encapsulated within HTTP packets. Thus, any device that can execute an internet browser application can communicate with the advanced control and condition monitoring web service 204 via the web services interface 258 and the web services block 256. For example, a remote terminal or a hand held computer device adapted to execute a browser application may communicate with the advanced control and condition monitoring web service 204 via the Internet or any other conventional or suitable communication link.
As is generally known, the controllers 304 and 306 may implement or supervise process control routines stored therein or otherwise associated therewith and communicate with the field devices 314-328 to control a process being executed by the process control system 300 in any desired manner. The field devices 314-328 may be any types of devices, such as sensors, valves, transmitters, positioners, etc., while I/O cards 332-338 within the banks 310 and 312 may be any types of I/O devices conforming to any desired communication or controller protocol such as HART, Fieldbus, Profibus, etc. In the exemplary process control system 300 shown in
The workstation or computer 308 also includes software 344 that, when executed by the workstation 308, performs process control functions such as, for example, real-time data gathering and analysis, alarm and event processing, operator interface functions, control functions, etc. In addition, the software 344 may also perform advanced control and condition monitoring functions such as, for example, vibration monitoring, real-time optimization, expert system analysis, predictive maintenance, loop monitoring, etc. Thus, the banks of I/O devices 310 and 312, including the controllers 304 and 306 and the field devices 314-328 connected thereto, generally correspond to the I/O subsystems block 250 shown in
As shown in
Before describing the functions of the graphical user interface 116 (
The tree selection guide 404 includes a hierarchical arrangement of the various features, services and/or functions that can be performed by the graphical user interface 116, the information server 114 and generally any of the available web services with which the information server 114 can communicate. The active display area 406 displays information pertaining to the feature or function of the graphical user interface 116 that is currently selected (e.g., highlighted and selected using a mouse or keyboard, for example) by the user via the tree selection guide 404. The window 400 may be generated by an internet browser application being executed by the graphical user interface 116, and the content within the window 400 (e.g., the display area 406, the tree 404, etc.) may be generated by the information server 114 and transmitted to the browser application being executed by the graphical user interface 116 as HTML messages via the network 120.
After the user has finished selecting and/or entering configuration information for service 1 in the views 450, 500 and/or 520 as described above, the user may select the OK button 480 in the view 450 to send the configuration information to the information server 114 (
After the web service associated with service 1 receives the configuration information from the information server 114, the web service builds an XML stream, which may contain XML configuration information such as, for example, XML schemas that may be used to control the router 136 and the scheduler 134, and sends the XML stream back to information server 114 for storage within the database 138 along with the UID (associated with the current user of the graphical user interface 116) and the SID (associated with service 1). In this manner, the web service associated with service 1 instructs the information server 114 how the scheduler 134 and the router 136 must be configured to carry out the functions of service 1 as defined by the user within the views 450, 500 and/or 520. For example, the scheduler 134 may periodically retrieve data from the web service associated with service 1 and may send this retrieved data to particular destinations as defined by the user within the views 450, 500 and 520.
The system and technique described herein may also use distribution lists, which are distinct from the groups discussed above. In general a distribution list may, for example, contain people from different groups that have something in common. For example, a distribution list may consist of employees that are all involved with a particular project, all employees within a particular building or facility, etc. The system described herein may maintain distribution lists as tables or other similar data structures that the users that are members of the list as well as corresponding user identifiers (i.e., UIDs) and configuration and/or profile information, which includes group membership information. In this manner, in the event that information is to be conveyed using a distribution list, the communications engine 140 may convey the information to users within the distribution list in different manners based on their user profile and/of configuration information. For example, one user within a distribution list may receive the information via email, while other users within the list may receive the information via their pagers or in some other requested or specified manner.
It is important to recognize that the availability of the views provided by the graphical user interface 116, examples of which are described in connection with
Further, while the selection tree 404 depicted in
While the views shown in
While the web services-based communication system and technique described herein has been described as being implemented using an XML-based server, it can be implemented using any other suitable transactional data language on any suitable hardware platform. Further, although the functions of the information server described herein are described herein as being implemented primarily as software, some or all of these functions may be implemented in hardware, firmware, etc. Thus, the web services-based communication system and technique described herein may be implemented in a standard multi-purpose processor or using specifically designed hardware or firmware as desired. When implemented in software, the software routines may be stored in any computer readable memory such as on a magnetic disk, a laser disk, or other storage medium, in a RAM or ROM of a computer or processor, etc. Likewise, the software may be delivered to a user or a process control system via any known or desired delivery method including, for example, on a computer readable disk or other transportable computer storage mechanism or over a communication channel such as a telephone line, the Internet, etc. (which are viewed as being the same as or interchangeable with providing such software via a transportable storage medium).
Thus, while the present invention has been described with reference to specific examples, which are intended to be illustrative only and not to be limiting of the invention, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that changes, additions or deletions may be made to the disclosed embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application is a continuation of and claims the benefit of priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/290,656, entitled “Web Services-Based Communications for Use with Process Control Systems,” filed Nov. 7, 2011 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/123,445, entitled “Web Services-Based Communications for Use with Process Control Systems,” filed Apr. 15, 2002 and which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 8,073,967 on Dec. 6, 2011, which is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/902,201, entitled “Transactional Data Communications for Process Control Systems,” filed on Jul. 10, 2001 and which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,162,534 on Jan. 9, 2007, the entire disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein.
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