How to implement the process observer architecture?

Business management systems often use different solutions to communicate with similar systems of the same category. Usually, to manage a real-time process dedicated communication links connecting digital plant-floor devices or remote terminal units are utilized. On the other hand, process control devices (e.g. PLC, DCS) use different vendor specific communication protocols and standards for communication. Therefore, communication of the existing IT systems with the process control is like a jigsaw with pieces from different puzzle sets.

How to implement the Process Observer architecture?

The best way to implement the Process Observer architecture is to use software products from the CommServer package family that includes three main products. For the Process Observer architecture, CommServer is the most important one. It is an industrial communication server software with smart data transfer functions. A built-in specialized communication engine optimizes access to plant-floor devices analyzing the current process state. CommServer allows to simplify the communication links structure and optimizes communication with distributed objects of business infrastructure.

To support different communication protocols, dedicated plug-ins employed. Proprietary and very specific protocols can be easily implemented using a free toolkit available with the software family.. Accessing the plant-floor devices by an intermediate server allows publishing the process data through a common and processing it simultaneously by the process control and management systems.

Not only OPC. Other standards.

What if the business application can’t operate as an OPC client? In that case another product, DataPorter, should be employed.

The DataPorter is an OPC Client dedicated to data management and conversion. It is able to get data from many sources, like OPC Servers, databases and XML web services. Then, data can be processed according to required recipes, converted and shared using additional international standards for data exchange, such as SQL or XML. In other words, DataPorter extends CommServer functionality publishing the data using additional communication standards. DataPorter as an OPC client may, of course, be used as self-dependant software irrespective of CommServer.