OPERATIONS & ENGINEERING SKILLS

Integrated Development Environments Go Virtual, Global

Expand a single-node system by a couple or more nodes, or change topologies, or connect computers to another server - and “things get complicated,” states Rashesh Mody, vice president of human-machine-interface (HMI) and supervisory-control-and-data-acquisition (SCADA) services for manufacturing software vendor Wonderware (www.wonderware.com), Lake Forest, Calif.

Feasible remedies to these induced complexities lie with integrated-development environments (IDEs). They help end-users meet their needs with their applications, which increasingly incorporate different types and speeds of analog and digital input/output, notes Kamran Shah, LabView marketing manager at automation vendor National Instruments (www.ni.com), Austin, Texas. IDEs offer that assistance by offering development tools and functionalities such as control-programming software/command libraries, HMI development tools, data-exchange software and debugging tools, adds Tom Edwards, senior technical advisor at automation-and-controls vendor Opto 22 (www.opto22.com), Temecula, Calif.

True to form, though, there’s a “but.” “You must have global namespace service, central administration of software and universal application development to have a powerful integrated-development environment,” Mody emphasizes.

Global namespace replaces traditional common directories for tracking computers on a system. A principal drawback of those common registries is having to rename tags and references when computer locations change, Mody explains. With global namespace, however, “you don’t know where anyone is - you don’t care where anyone is,” he says, noting that this fix eliminates reengineering configurations. And data can be created in one location and then retrieved anywhere else, adds John Strembiski, team leader for Proficy Process Systems at Charlottesville, Va. - headquartered GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms (www.gefanuc.com). But he advises security constraints for information retrievers based on their role... Read more

» MANAGERS & EXECUTIVES SKILLS: Passionate Project Managers Deliver the Goods -
If you’re a project manager (PM), chances are you aren’t technically proficient in all of the project’s areas. Really, though, you don’t have to be.

But you’d better be passionate about the project’s outcome and exhibit that passion when dealing with its participants, observes Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst with Info-Tech Research Group (www.infotech.com), a London, Ontario, Canada-based information technology (IT) research and consulting firm... Read more

» IT & NETWORKING SKILLS: Using XML in Automation -
The Web standard for communicating information, the eXtensible Markup Language or XML, is more than eleven years old. Its use in automation is still in infancy, however.

At its root, XML provides a method for a publisher of information to indicate what the information is in the message, such that a subscriber to the message can understand what the information is and act on it accordingly. This is a text-based language, thus human-readable... Read more

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