Methods and apparatus for a data driven interface based on relationships between process control tags

A graphic display editor for use in a process plant to navigate between process control graphical elements that represent entities within a process plant, the graphic display editor comprising:

• a library of relationships, wherein each of the relationships includes a different relationship between a physical or a logical entity within the process control plant and another physical or logical entity within the process control plant;
• a graphically based navigational editor routine that enables a user to define an executable graphic display by placing indications of one or more graphic objects from a library of graphic objects onto an edit view to define a manner in which visual representations of the one or more graphic objects will be displayed on a display device to a user during execution of the graphic display, the graphic objects being representative of physical or logical entities within the process control plant;
• a relationship routine that enables the user to associate one or more relationships from the library of relationships with a graphical object, wherein the relationship routine enables the user to control navigation from the graphic object to another graphical object based on the relationship;
• and
• a graphically based navigational editor routine that enables a user to further define the executable graphic display by placing indications of one or more relationship graphic objects onto an edit view to define a manner in which visual representations of the one or more relationships will be displayed on a display device to a user in conjunction with the visual representations of the one or more graphic objects associated with the relationships during execution of the graphic display.

A computer system for use in a process control system including a memory for storing computer-executable instructions, a processor for executing the instructions, and a display for displaying one or more visual relationship representations in a graphical representation of the process control plant, each visual relationship representation representing a relationship between two entities within the process control system, the system comprising:

• a database including one or more relationships between a physical or a logical entity within the process control plant and another physical or logical entity within the process control plant;
• and
• a graphical human-machine interface for displaying the graphical representation of the process plant, the interface including a relationship module having computer-executable instructions for:
• configuring a relationship value reference and two or more process control graphical element identifications associated with the relationship value reference;
• binding each configured relationship value reference to two or more process control graphical elements of the graphical human-machine interface based on the two or more configured process control graphical element identifications;
• and
• driving navigation of the operation display from the first process control graphical element to the second process control graphical element using the relationship value reference.