Wonderware System Platform

Anyone using it? I've been a WW 'guru' since '93 and have hundreds of apps developed. I have an entire plant to do now and they want a uniform presentation (probably 10 stations) on WW System Platform. I just did a similar facility 3 years ago and have most of the apps developed in 10.1, so what am I faced with migrating over to System Platform? How much time should I add for conversion from say a 1000 Tag app 10.1, no SQL or Historian, just cut/dry process control, alarming and visualization over to System Platform.

They're telling me that it's not tag based anymore but object based. Is that true or just some fancy sales talk?

FYI the customer says don't 'convert' 10.1 apps, but make them look the same for operator consistency (they can send operators from other plants to help startup and train). What does conversion do? Can you tell the difference between a 10.1 app converted vs one developed natively in System?

I use system platform everyday and am in the process of taking the system platform certification test. I have about 4 galaxy's deployed now. Before with Intouch I probably did 5 total jobs with it. Going to System Platform was a huge jump. I hardly use Intouch at all now, I create all my graphics in the galaxy's areas and just embed them into Intouch.

System Platform can eat up a lot of time but is very powerful. With you being new you won't have any templates created, creating the templates will take the most time but after that one template is created you can make 100's of instances of that which speeds up the process. I probably have close to 200 templates that do different things.

WW is very specific in the way things are setup. Including Platforms(Computers) The system needs Primary Object servers, Secondary Object(Redundancy) and a GR node. Also in the way the plant model is layed out with different Areas.

WW has BTL (Binding Template Library) which can bind directly with Field and UDA members in objects to tags in RSK5000 using the WW DAServers automatically.

Its hard to say but you could spend 100's of hours creating the templates you need before you even start building the plant model. Best advice is to take all of the courses with WW on System Platform before diving in. Once you start diving in and creating and start on the wrong foot. Then your whole galaxy is based off of that which could be a bad base.

EDIT: I never converted an app from Intouch to System Platform. We just quoted a job to do this, but converting is not an option for us, that would be to messy to maintain. IMO.

I think the system platform really just sits on top to manage your apps rather than to 'convert' them. Your inTouch apps should just get imported in as an Archestra package object. You will have the ability to check in/out your apps, and deploy them to nodes which you will configure. If you want to edit the base object of the App, it will launch traditional Window maker and its up to you whether or not you will redo any graphics/symbols in the Archestra Galaxy before importing them to your InTouch App.

Any and all development in the System platform is as I understand it object based as this is the migration path. Learning to script your graphics in Vb.net? isn't so bad. It's what it can be made to that is very complex/impressive. Most of the time you have very neat GUI to add most animations/visbility/user input etc. All you do is define custom properties and substitute them (in Intouch) for actual tags in your InTouch tag dictionary.

It's actually pretty good!

You can deploy unmanaged applications within system platform which means it is basically a Intouch application. Saying that there is always a benefit going object based . It makes it easier to govern standards and have consistency across a plant/business.

When working with objects it makes it more manageable that having to edit an Intouch application.

I would get Topserver/Kepware for the IOserver instead of using the DI Object or DAS. IF the client has the funds to create standards i would go down that path, create the templates and then create the instances.

You can do this in parallel with the current application to minimize risk and down time.If he doesnt then it is a massive risk and i would just import the application into system platform and keep it as is.

All depends on what your current InTouch application is doing (scripting, indirect addressing, SQL...). If you are really talking about 1000 tag InTouch application, System Platform is overkill and will cost $$$ for such a small project.

Plus, you pretty much need server grade hardware to run it (from a development standpoint). Granted high-end laptops will do ok.

We keep getting pushed to migrate to Sys. Platform, but the costs are so high we can't justify it yet (despite how WW Sales tells us "2 nodes is where Sys Platform costs become cheaper...". Between licensing and development, the hidden costs aren't cheap despite the "Reactor Demo" applications that WW Sales shows off....

We've had to do some projects with it, and have performance issues especially with interfacing with SQL, something InTouch has no-problem with. I've had other customers of mine report to me similar issues of poor performance.

Personally, I'm over WonderWare in general but I'm stuck with it until management realizes that our labor costs are so high because InTouch is dated software and System Platform is just to costly out-of-the-box.

RheinhardtP said:

I would get Topserver/Kepware for the IOserver instead of using the DI Object or DAS.

Click to expand...

I don't want to hijack this thread, but you can access IO without using a DI object?

You can connect via OPC or suitelink object to the IOserver.

Thanks for the replies...any recommendations for a quality training program? Something tailored towards those that already know WW inside/out and will concentrate more on migrating towards SP.

Obviously I would say your local WW distributor would offer the best classes for App Server. Like I said before even though you know Intouch, App Server is a different animal. I have taken all of the App Server classes, and they do a good job teaching it in a week.