Accelerate your live data with RoviSys Turbo!

Whether or not you have DBDOC, your INFI 90® System can use RoviSys Turbo. RoviSys Turbo makes DBDOC live data five to ten times faster. Composer alone is typically ten times faster when monitoring. There is no extra communication loading.

How does it work? RoviSys is the first to make use of capability in the CIU and IET800 to fetch up to 16 analogs or 16 digitals in a single GMI fetch. Setting up your IET800 with OPC90 to gain the advantages of turbo polling is straightforward and uses standard ABB parts. 

10x faster with no extra load!

RoviSys Turbo gets up to 16 analog or digital values from a module in one message, improving monitoring significantly at no extra communications load.

Put spare CIUs to good use

RoviSys Turbo can handle multiple CIUs and IET800s - serial, SCSI and ethernet. Make use of spare CIUs by providing added cabability for power users, or increasing the amount of data fetched.

Share a CIU or IET800

Use what you’ve got! RoviSys Turbo can support Composer and DBDOC at the same time using one CIU or IET800. Composer is given priority over DBDOC, while DBDOC makes good use of the CIU when available.

Try RoviSys Turbo!

Accelerate today! Visit gmcl.com or rovisys.com for more information and start your free trial of RoviSys Turbo.

A more efficient approach to live specs

Until DBDOC 11.1, "live specs" were a kind of live loop annotation.  Although simple conceptually, this caused a number of problems in practice.  For one thing, although "live" specs are live, in the sense that they may change, they very rarely do, and certainly not at live data fetch timescales.  So having live specs turned on for a block could cause the repeated fetching of tens of items, clogging up bandwidth for no benefit whatsoever.

In addition, it is laborious to compare the live spec values with the static spec values.

The solution in 11.1 is to display live specs integrated with normal layered specs on CADs/CLDs.  The live specs are fetched only once (or if you refresh them), and the static to live spec value comparison is done automatically, with discrepancies visually highlighted.

Note that you have to choose "Enable Live Specs" from the "View" menu in order to get this capability!

How To Provide Remote DCS Support Without Compromising System Security

Critical DCS Support Aspects

There are times in the life of a DCS system that timely access to operating data is critical for maintenance of reliable operation. Sites have only a few DCS specialists, whose time is severely limited. Even the most critical systems do not have 24/7 resident specialists available.

INFI 90 Has Read-Only Access (via DBDOC)

INFI 90 systems are fortunate, because remote read-only access to live DCS data is possible by way of DBDOC. The DCS specialists can examine a plant situation in the most timely manner possible. They can respond faster, diagnose problems from anywhere and guide people at the plant through fault-finding and problem resolution immediately rather than adversely affecting the plant (and the public) with the delay time needed for them to get to the plant.

Read-only access protected by a VPN (Virtual Private Network) allows immediate plant support, increasing the reliability of the plant output, as well as its profitability and safety. Reliablility, profitability and safety gains - things worth working for.

How Safe is the Plant VPN?

Competent IT techniques protect access to salary, accounts payable, and accounts receivable data. All manner of plant technical and operating data is just as well protected. VPN technology is critical to the operation of companies.

What if somebody can see the data? DBDOC's read-only access guarantees that no changes can be made to the DCS.

Decrees About Access From Outside

Decrees have been made in some operations that there shall be no access to the plant data from outside the process network. On-site action is required to resolve problems, even if it takes the support personnel too long to get there to do the job. Valid performance requires far more people than are available or can reasonably be trained to the level needed.

 Should Prohibiting External Access be Reviewed?

It will take disasters caused by ill-considered decrees limiting access for support purposes to force the re-examination of such policies. More likely, fingers will be pointed at various people, none of them culpable.

DBDOC has created the ability to do immediate and effective read-only trouble-shooting remotely for INFI 90 systems. The people using DBDOC read-only access know that it helps them make their plants safer and more reliable.

DBDOC 10.5.1: What's in it?

DBDOC 10.5.1 has made its appearance this summer, with some major updates to our support for SPlus and PGP graphics, as well as completely reworked 800xA support.  Database tag records are now much clearer and complete than ever before.  And with the addition of Error Data Sharing, the first example of data sharing support for Hyperview users is now complete.


Improved Database Tag Records

One of the first changes you might notice upon upgrading to DBDOC 10.5.1 (download here), is the completely reworked presentation of database tag records in the Hyperview browser.

For historical reasons, tag records displayed in Hyperview used to look like this:

 

 

And now they look like this, which is a lot easier to read:

 

Complete Tag Information from Operate IT and SPlus

In addition, ALL data is now extracted from Operate IT (PPB and 800xA) XML database files, and are now be usefully displayed (and searchable) within DBDOC.  Previously only a limited subset of tag attributes was extracted by DBDOC and presented in the Hyperview browser.

Before:

After:

Error Sharing
 

Another change you might notice, if you were introduced to the Error Browser in the last release, is the appearance of a new checkbox list on the left hand side of the browser window.  This is a list of users on your system who are sharing their error stars and checks, which you can choose to display in your Error Browser.  This makes it easy to review errors collaboratively.   It is planned for future releases to include shared bookmarks, annotations, Watch Window groups, and Watch Window data.  

 

 

 

To participate in error data sharing, use the new Sharing tab of the Options dialog to register for sharing in a specified Shared Data Folder.  Usually the name of the Shared Data Folder will be supplied in the project file, so all you have to do to start sharing is hit OK to register.

 

 

Extended Support for SPlus and PGP Graphics
 

If you have SPlus or PGP graphics, you will notice substantial developments in DBDOC's support for these formats.  Support has been extended past the initial support of systems converted from Conductor VMS systems to include consoles converted from Conductor NT and Process Portal B. Live controller data has been added.

Extended and Reworked Support for 800xA Graphics

The support for 800xA has been completely reworked to make use of data extracted by programs from Assistance Système LD Inc. (ASSYST) giving better images, access to controller data and text searching on graphics, and eliminating the numbers and arrows seen in earlier versions using the previous approach to extracting these graphics for DBDOC.

Other Updates

In addition to the major developments described above, 10.5.1 delivers plenty of minor bug fixes and
improvements.  More DBDOC error types have now been converted to display in the Error Browser.  Live data (notably in the Watch Window) can now be requested every 100ms.  Go To Use right-click navigation in Hyperview now places system uses before DBDOC generated documents.  Timestamp labels can now be hidden in the Watch Window.   CIUMon logging has been improved in many ways.  Command line support for importing DBDOC projects has been implemented, making it much easier to migrate the DBDOC build system to a new computer.  And many more small changes which you may or may not encounter but which increase DBDOC's robustness and usefulness in specific situations.

If you haven't already, take a moment to download DBDOC 10.5.1 and upgrade your system.

RoviSys OPC90Server - Turbo90 - Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

Summary

Use of RoviSys OPC90Server Turbo with DBDOC CIUMon gives you the ability to read up to 16 analog or digital values from a module in one fetch, with average performance up to 100 values per second at 10 fetches per second.  Performance this strong has never existed before for INFI 90.  Both serial and SCSI CIUs can give this performance.

Details

Our DBDOC CIUMon product uses direct or multiplexed access to a CIU - any old CIU - to get live, read-only, data from an INFI 90 system.  The performance limitations are severe - typically as few as 15 values per second.  This is a problem shared with any polled data interface to INFI 90.

The new version of a software product RoviSys OPC90Server uses well-established techniques to get in the range of 100 values per second from the INFI Loop.  It does this in a way that improves the safety of the system at the same time.  We call it "Turbo90" affectionately.

What Turbo90 means for INFI 90 users is that, for the first time, it is possible to get much more polled data from a system.  DBDOC WatchWindow, for example, is much more valid with the new bandwidth.  You can monitor analog and digital values with greatly increased precision.  Use a dediczted CIU and you can even get fairly reliable 250 ms data.  Although the absolute time is indeterminate, the data rate is very high.

It is not prudent to put too high a load on a single PCU / node.  The quantity that should be limited is the number of GMI fetches.  The reason for being cautious is that too many of these high priority requests can slow down or stall the generation of exception reports (XR) in the node in older NIS/NPM versions (except for NIS21/NPM22).

Turbo90 gets as many as 16 values per GMI fetch.  We have measured 120 values per second at 13 GMI fetches per second.  Another data run of 25 minutes averaged 62 values per second with 10 GMI fetches per second for the entire period.

Analysis and validation of the above statements is possible if you wish to get data from us, or to run the tests yourself with our assistance.