Industrial IDE Collaboration With Milestone Rollback Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing industrial automation systems lack an efficient method for managing edit records in a collaborative cloud-based development environment, leading to difficulties in tracking modifications and maintaining project consistency.
Innovation Solution
A system for collaborative cloud-based development of industrial applications, comprising a memory to store project data, a user interface to receive edit records, and a collaboration management component to apply, classify, and manage edit records, allowing for milestone versioning and rollback functionality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple users collaborate on industrial automation projects in real-time, then productivity and collaboration efficiency are improved, but tracking modifications and maintaining project consistency becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates milestone records that capture the state of edit records at specific points in time before collaborative modifications are made. This preliminary action of saving milestones allows the system to later restore project consistency by comparing current edit records against the stored milestone state, preventing information loss during real-time collaboration.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides feedback mechanisms that track and display the status of edit records (applied, unapplied, conflicts) to all collaborating users. This feedback loop allows users to monitor project consistency in real-time and understand the impact of their edits, enabling them to make informed decisions that maintain overall project integrity while collaborating efficiently.
2Productivity
If all edit records are applied to the project data, then productivity and development speed are improved, but the ability to recover from errors and maintain version control is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates milestone records that capture the state of edit records at specific points in time before collaborative modifications are made. This preliminary action of saving milestones allows the system to later restore project consistency by comparing current edit records against the stored milestone state, preventing information loss during real-time collaboration.
Solution Approach 2:
The system selectively applies or discards edit records based on their status and conflict resolution. Edit records can be applied when they are consistent with the project state, and discarded or recovered when conflicts are detected or milestones need to be restored. This selective application maintains reliability while allowing rapid development through batch processing of edit records.
3Measurement precision
If the system tracks all edit records in detail, then measurement precision and version control are improved, but device complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments edit records into distinct categories (applied, unapplied, conflicts) and processes them in batches rather than individually. This segmentation allows the system to track all edits with high precision while reducing processing complexity by handling groups of similar edit records together, rather than processing each edit as a separate complex operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies partial action by selectively processing only the necessary subset of edit records at each milestone restoration operation. Instead of re-processing all edit records, the system identifies and processes only those relevant to restoring the milestone state, reducing processing overhead while maintaining complete tracking accuracy through the milestone record.
Data Source
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AI summary
An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) supports collaborative tools that allow multiple designers and programmers to remotely submit design input to the same automation system project in parallel while maintaining project consistency. The industrial IDE also permits localized development of system projects, and provides an infrastructure for intelligently brokering between conflicting edits submitted to common portions of the system project. Project edits submitted to the IDE system, both applied and unapplied, are stored as edit records, allowing edits to be selectively undone or applied either manually or as part of a rollback to a milestone version.