Distributed Control Runtime Services Without Address Translation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Distributed control systems in industrial automation face challenges in managing configuration data, as central management leads to single-point failures and decentralized management requires costly address translations, causing namespace conflicts and inefficiencies.
Innovation Solution
A distributed control system where each runtime service manages its own configuration data with unique identifiers, avoiding central storage and unnecessary address translations by using a concatenation of Global Unique Identifiers and OPC UA node paths for configuration items, allowing services to operate independently and maintain loose coupling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a central monolithic configuration data management is used, then configuration data can be centrally stored and accessed, but the system creates a single-point-of-failure and tightly couples services
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the centralized configuration data management into distributed service-specific configuration data storages. Each service maintains its own configuration data independently, eliminating the single-point-of-failure while preserving accessible configuration data through service-specific address spaces.
2Reliability
If a de-centralized configuration data management per service is used, then services operate independently, but many configuration item address translations are required which are costly to implement and maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a configuration item identifier as an intermediary that uniquely identifies configuration items across services without requiring address translations. This identifier acts as a universal key that services can use to reference configuration items directly, eliminating the need for complex translation mechanisms while maintaining service independence.
3Adaptability or versatility
If de-centralized configuration data management is used, then services are loosely coupled, but namespace address conflicts occur where configuration items are no longer uniquely identifiable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal configuration item identifier that serves multiple functions simultaneously: it uniquely identifies configuration items within individual services, provides global uniqueness across all services, and enables direct referencing without translation. This universal identifier resolves namespace conflicts while preserving service loose coupling.
Data Source
AI summary
A distributed control system and a corresponding method for industrial processes are provided. The distributed control system includes one or more runtime services spanning over a server- and control layer. Each runtime service is arranged to manage its own configuration data, and each configuration item of the runtime service is provided with an identifier that is unique within the distributed control system, wherein each such unique identifier is associated with a physical host address corresponding to an endpoint of the respective runtime service and stored as an attribute of its configuration item.