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To: John Mansfield who wrote (9335)	1/23/1998 3:57:00 PM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

<'My name is Janice Myint. As part of the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Year 2000 effort...'> What a great find, John. You REALLY know how to research the web! Cheryl

To: John Mansfield who wrote (9335)	1/23/1998 5:02:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 31646

Microsoft/Internet/Wonderware/TAVA microsoft.com Well I get carried away a bit by all this wonderful Microsoft/Wonderware stuff ;-) What a partner for TAVA! John ------ White paper Internet Impact on SCADA & Control Applications The Internet represents perhaps the ultimate application of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems because it provides a simple yet powerful way to enable remote monitoring and data collection over the World Wide Web or on a corporate Intranet. In both cases, remote users can take advantage of very capable view nodes that provide a "universal viewer" into multiple types of factory or process applications. Wonderware presently markets the ScoutT family of Internet tools for remote visualization of SCADA and control applications. It is a three-part system that includes an industrial "browser," a web server and data provider programs. <snip> The third element of the system consists of the data providers that link the application to the Scout Outpost web server. The data providers convert the industrial application to applets that can be posted on the server viewing by the browser. The providers incorporate connections to a variety of I/O servers, including Wonderware InTouchT, any DDE-compatible application, and/or any Intuitive Technology @aGlance/IT server for systems such as Aspen, Elsag-Bailey, Honeywell, Siemens and Fisher-Rosemount. Scout VT can retrieve real-time information from multiple data sources simultaneously, and within each web site it can "drill down" to access the specific data elements desired - such as process graphics pages, documents, reports and the data elements (or tag names) of each data provider. It contains a fully-encapsulated HTML document viewer OCX, which simplifies web browsing and permits access to web-based documents, reports and graphics from multiple Scout Outpost servers. All the user has to do is select a Scout VT object and attach the live data to an object element. The intent of the Scout product family is to provide a universal framework for remote views into live data and applications. Users can create screens with multiple objects <snip> For example, in a large, multi-plant company, management and production personnel could set up windows with views into multiple plants at the same time to compare relative production progress. For those who do want the ability to control applications remotely, however, Wonderware will soon provide an OCX Toolkit and a Data Agent Toolkit that customers can use to create their own view/control applications with Scout. What does the future hold for remote viewing of industrial applications? Much simpler implementations, mainly. The Scout family of products provides a framework within which remote viewing can occur but it will eventually be supplanted by Internet technologies from Microsoft itself. In the future, the Windows Explorer functionality found in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 will be combined with the Internet capabilities of the Microsoft Internet Explorer. This will formalize the direct linking of the desktop environment to the Internet for viewing of applications and trading of data. The user won't need to know where the application is - in the next office or around the globe - but people will be able to collaborate and share information via automatic links over the web. By signing on for an application, the system will seek it out and return it to the user within the desktop "window" via ActiveX controls, Java applets or some combination of the two. The actual connection will be transparent to the user because it will be an object technology. <JM: think again of MIS / plant floor integration > This is the same approach that is now being implemented in office application packages such as Microsoft OfficeT 97. Any documents or application elements, such as spreadsheets, documents or graphical presentations, can be saved as a Web page. Documents can be hyperlinked to another document on a user's hard drive or anywhere on the Web. Information can be gathered without using phone calls, faxes, or beeper pages - all at the click of a mouse or the stroke of a key. <JM: this is now offered as MS internet explorer; however some disputes with the DOJ seem to take place on the tight integration with MS windows 95 ;-)) > Once Microsoft provides this viewing framework using standard Windows-based Internet technologies, products such as Scout will no longer be necessary. Wonderware will use its FactorySuite tools to create libraries of Wizards that will function over the Internet. The ultimate will be reached when users can connect to a real-time database over the Web, not just to data points. This will facilitate development of very broad varieties of applications because of the massive amounts of real-time data that will be available for viewing and manipulation. by Mark Carson & Mark Tomasello Wonderware Corporation Irvine, California (U.S.A.)