SCADA acronym right or wrong?

Hi all,

I've always been under the impression that the acronym SCADA stood for "Supervisory Control and Data Aquisition" At the moment i'm dealing with a large systems integrator that keeps insisting the abreviation is "Sequential Control and Data Aquisitian" Since i'm being regarded as a complete imbasile (probably down to the fact that I wear overalls not a shirt and tie - despite 10 years previous programming SCADA and PLC) i'd like to get one up - BUT I thought i'd run this by the masses in case this changes from country to country.

Just to clarify, the SCADA is RSView interfaced to several SLC500 PLC's over ethernet.

harryting said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA

Click to expand...

Hey Harryting!

Great minds think alike - that was the first place I looked before posting, just wondered if there were any more pukka variations,

Cheers,

Outrage

I have never even heard of any other variations, this doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Really, "Sequential Control" doesn't even make sense in this context. Well, if you want to "get along" I would just ignore the dude.. or you can print out the Wikipedia article and post it in the lunch room

I know the term HMI and SCADA is used interchangablly at time, however; to me, SCADA always covers more than one machine/process and usually over a larger geographic area (such as an entire city).

harryting said:

I have never even heard of any other variations, this doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Really, "Sequential Control" doesn't even make sense in this context. Well, if you want to "get along" I would just ignore the dude.. or you can print out the Wikipedia article and post it in the lunch room

I know the term HMI and SCADA is used interchangablly at time, however; to me, SCADA always covers more than one machine/process and usually over a larger geographic area (such as an entire city).

Click to expand...

Posting it in the lunchroom sounds like a class idea!

Cheers,

Lee

I believe that acronyms like "SCADA", "SPOOL", "BASIC" etc. are reverse made i.e. they first find a suitable word like BASIC and then construct a acronym of it...

I'd even go so far as to say "sequential" is dead wrong and they are the idiots. SCADA systems are usually anything BUT sequential! They are not necessarilly even the local control, but rather the overall system, hence the "supervisory" aspect. Within a SCADA system you may have some local sequential controllers, some analog controllers, some PLCs with both, some relay panels, a DCS system, simple monitoring systems, etc.; an entire mix of local systems and technologies all being monitored and controlled at a "big picture" level.

In the words of Bugs Bunny... "What a maroon!"

Print out the Wiki article and all of these to over-state your point. Then print out this forum page so he can see that we think he's a maroon!

http://www.tech-faq.com/scada.shtml
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SCADA.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11351/
http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2000/003/scada/
http://www.sss-mag.com/scada.html

Love that one Pierre!!!

The definition for SCADA from Wikipedia is correct.

Perhaps you should direct the idiot to Pierre's referred page. Sounds like he is a used car salesman.

harryting in part said:

I have never even heard of any other variations, this doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Really, "Sequential Control" doesn't even make sense in this context.

Click to expand...

I think the dude came from the automotive industry.

Fancy cars used to have sequential turn signal.

The acquisition part is how long it takes for the guy behind you to react.

Hence...Sequential Control + Data Acquisition.

Glad To Be Of Help!

At one point a couple years ago, we set up an Entertron "Smart PAK" PLC for Sequential turn signals for my son's 71 Mustang.

Everyone should have one. (A 71 Mustand, and a "Smart PAK")

No...you're all wrong!

S.ome
C.ynical
A.rseholes
D.emand
A.rguments

Being ignorant, or even wrong, is acceptable and forgivable. I could forgive that guy for not really knowing what the acronym stands for, it's not really common knowledge. What frosts me about this situation is the guy's insistence that he is right, and the YOU were wrong, and he is a supposed "professional"!


By the way, totally forgivable, but it's spelled "imbecile", and no you are not one. I just thought I'd offer that because of the irony of spelling it wrong when trying to defend yourself from being treated like one.