Most IT managable clients - cast your vote

What's the most managable (reliability, backup-able, scalable, simple) client configuration for HMI/SCADA applications? There certainly isn't one best answer!

I'm going to list some options and techniques. Feel free to comment if you use such an approach or what you think about strengths/weaknesses. The options are not mutually exclusive!

My #1 would be a pure generated HTML approach. This is a no brainer because every computer on the network has a web browser - how hard is that to support? However, nobody has a fast, robust, and secure fully functional AJAX or otherwise based HMI package, so we're not going to count this.

2. "Appliance" devices such as Panelview, PV+ or competitors devices. I think we all know the strengths/weaknesses of this.

3. Terminal services or other "thin client" approach. I can't imagine admining my Windows servers without this! Very cool and easy from the client side - heavy to scale on the server side for multimedia rich applications.

4. Distributed thick client. Have to install and upgrade manually, but you have the advantage of being powerful on the client side. I give these thumbs up in a few cases, but more often thumbs down for the inherent de-centralized administration especially for scalability.

5. Thin client web based application. Choose your poison: Java, ActiveX, flash, or custom browser plugin. Best of both worlds in my opinion (client side feature rich and easy to install/upgrade/support). Some might argue that they're mediocre at both - not good enough graphics and not as simple as pure HTML. They tend to be universally compatible, although sometimes virtual machine/plugin versions need to be dealt with.

6. Virtualization with VMWare or something similar. You might consider this to be in the same category as #3. A computer lab that I visited ran Linux and VMWare to virtualize Windows. It was pretty cool because users could download viruses or whatever and the machines would automatically be re-imaged periodically. Their high end virtual networks seem like a really cool up and coming idea!

7. Use a simple pre-canned Linux build or something similar to turn a PC into an appliance. Using Windows XP embedded would be another example of this. As a pet project I want to make a build of Morphix, which is a pluggable version of Knoppix, that's a boot CD for HMI clients. In my case the user would boot any computer from the CD, the first time it would prompt them for the server IP address, then it'd just boot into a dedicated full screen HMI terminal. Has anyone done anything like this for a non-OEM application? It's really a fun idea.

I am in the middle of swapping a couple of RSView32 hosts to a web/java based system called FactoryPMI. Very powerful, yet still simple to use. Im sure you've heard of this product?

lol, I've heard of them. I was involved in specifying and designing FactorySQL and FactoryPMI back around 2003. They've come a long ways since then, particularly with this new SQLTags feature that will be released next week. I am still involved with Inductive Automation as a consultant - mostly because I'm hooked. Design input, testing, work on docs, support integrators, etc. In my real life I do IT and communications work for Uncle Sam - I'm an officer in the Navy, actually on my way to Korea tomorrow.

This post was innocent in its intent - trying to talk general technologies rather than discuss specific applications. I'm always ready to talk programs and features, though. As long as you mention it, FactoryPMI is hard to beat as a best of breed application.

ghettofreeryder said:

I am in the middle of swapping a couple of RSView32 hosts to a web/java based system called FactoryPMI. Very powerful, yet still simple to use. Im sure you've heard of this product?

Click to expand...

I myself have no formal IT training, but I found Inductive Automations software quite easy to use. I have experience with RSView32/ME/SE, Wonderware, and a bunch of less known HMIs. I have found that RSView32 to be quite unreliable at all facilities I have been to. Wonderware is better, but too costly. I am in the process of migrating all of the HMIs for Enerchem to FactoryPMI. Going good so far, so ill keep ya posted.

I'm very sold on the Microsoft ClickOnce deployment method of deploying and maintaining software.

The developer puts the application out on a web server or file server and gives the web link/file location to the users. They install it to their local machine (thick client) with the link. Then everytime they launch the program, it automatically goes back to the original install location or another defined location and checks for updates that it brings down automatically. It brings the manageability of web based solutions and the power of thick clients together.

Now the questions is : Does any HMI/SCADA package offer a deployment solution that works like ClickOnce?

Archie, I haven't used ClickOnce, but I have seen an ActiveX based HMI system written in .NET that exhibited what you describe.

I believe that FactoryPMI "one ups" or at least matches it in functionality with Java Web Start and some cool builtin supporting code. They would show you this all in a free web demo. More realistically, MS did what they do best and emulated cool functionality. Heck, if they haven't already, they'll probably make it better somehow. Here's how a typical FactoryPMI launch (Either the client or the development environment) works behind the scenes:

1. A first time user clicks on the http link to the project. This downloads the current runtime version of FactoryPMI (or designer) and caches it to the local hard drive. Subsequent launches automatically check the version and download only the different compressed .JAR files that have changed. This is referring to actual versions of OUR SOFTWARE, not YOUR PROJECT. Java Web Start asks if you want a shortcut to the application on your desktop. From here on you can launch with that shortcut like a "regular" program - no web page necessary.

2. A login screen opens which downloads your serialized project. Our online demo application is about 500k. The biggest project I've seen is our internal CRM application, which is about 4 megs. This is also versioned and cached to the client.

3. After logging in, if someone makes a change to a project and saves it (in the designer), all connected clients are notified through the FactoryPMI Gateway. They each get a little red text label on the top of the screen notifying that there is a more recent version of their project available. If they ignore the link, they can continue working with their current version until they close the app. Clicking on the new version saves their window state, downloads the new version of the project, and logs the user back in with the same windows open. Pretty slick!

4. If the administrator decides to upgrade the version of FactoryPMI on the Gateway, open clients are upgraded a bit more forcefully (because by design we want the clients to run the same version as the Gateway). Open clients are immediately logged out, download the .JAR files that have changed, and have the project open at the login window.

There really is nothing to client managability. The only things to "support" on the client side that ever come up:

1. We now support Java 5 (1.5) and will additionally support Java 6 (1.6) as of release 3.1.

2. All client traffic goes through a single user definable TCP port (8080 by default). In (less common) cases where the customer wants to expose the gateway over the Internet via NAT or has multiple adapters and addresses on multiple networks, particularly if they're using clustered Gateways, they sometimes have to set up an outbound firewall rule and define some of these ports in the Gateway.

As far as the future goes, we could use a custom JRE and get really sly with launching (with custom ActiveX wrappers and lots of Javascript on the client end). The idea would be to launch like gotomypc or gotomeeting, which is always magically fast and seamless. That would involve not using Sun's oh so cool, Java Web Start, which also means that we'd have to do the legwork for Linux machines, Macs, etc.

Archie said:

I'm very sold on the Microsoft ClickOnce deployment method of deploying and maintaining software.

The developer puts the application out on a web server or file server and gives the web link/file location to the users. They install it to their local machine (thick client) with the link. Then everytime they launch the program, it automatically goes back to the original install location or another defined location and checks for updates that it brings down automatically. It brings the manageability of web based solutions and the power of thick clients together.

Now the questions is : Does any HMI/SCADA package offer a deployment solution that works like ClickOnce?

Click to expand...

The designer for FactoryPMI is also web-deployed, which is another feature that could easily be overlooked. The ability to use any computer as a designer is definately a benefit. I have not seen this with any other HMI package