US 5,859,977 AGranted

System for software update in manner based on processing properties of devices via maintenance network while allowing data transmission between devices on another network

AssigneesHitachi, Ltd., Hitachi Process Engineering, Inc.

InventorsShuji Nishiyama, Hiroaki Nakanishi, Hideki Sato, Hiroshi Kobayashi, Shigeru Endo, Toshimasa Saika, Teruyasu Nakahashi, Hiroyuki Hori, Tomohito Ebina, Keiichi Sannomiya, Shimako Tanno

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Abstract

A computer system is so configured as to be divided into a control system which should have high reliability and high responsiveness and an information system which does not access the control system. They are connected via a transmission path (transmission path of control system and transmission path of information system). Centralized management of development and maintenance is performed from a software maintenance system. In development and maintenance of software, management according to the feature of each software such as processing contents of each software, demanded reliability, and version up frequency is performed from a maintenance system for exclusive use by using a transmission path of information system. Thereby, development and maintenance having high reliability and expandability is realized.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A network system comprising:

a plurality of networks;
a plurality of processing devices connected to said networks, wherein at least one of said processing devices is set as a management processing device and the remaining processing devices are divided into a plurality of groups based on processing properties of said processing devices, said groups including at least a processing device group for performing processing of an information system and a processing device group for performing processing of a control system,
said group which performs the processing of the control system comprises processing for rewriting a data base corresponding to a controlled system or processing for directly accessing a controlled system, and wherein said group which performs the processing of an information system comprises processing other than rewriting the data base corresponding to the controlled system or directly accessing the controlled system;
and
software maintenance means stored in said management processing device for maintenance of software which runs on said processing devices, said software maintenance means including a database storing, for each of the processing devices, information identifying the group to which said device belongs and the manner in which the software for said device is to be updated by said software maintenance means;
wherein one of said networks is a maintenance network for distributing a program to a processing device of one of said groups identified in said database to be managed under control of said software maintenance means, said maintenance carried out only on said maintenance network while allowing data transmission between said processing devices on at least a network different from said maintenance network.

3 more elements

A method of software management in a network system including a plurality of networks, a plurality of processing devices connected via said networks and divided into a plurality of processing device groups based on processing properties of said processing devices, software management means for managing different kinds of software being run on said processing devices and software maintenance means for maintenance of software which runs on said processing devices, said method comprising the steps of:

dividing said plurality of processing devices into a plurality of network groups on the basis of processing properties;
selecting as a maintenance network one of said networks to which a plurality of processing devices are connected, including a management processing device;
storing, in said management processing device, identification information of processing devices to be managed, said identification information including the groups to which said devices belong, the manner in which the software for said devices is to be updated, the soft ware running on said processing devices to be managed, and software maintenance means for maintaining said software;
and
distributing a program via said maintenance network whereby maintenance of said software is carried out under control of said software maintenance means while allowing data transmission between said processing devices on at least a network different from said maintenance network.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.