Method and apparatus for the creation of personalized supervisory and control data acquisition systems for the management and integration of real-time enterprise-wide applications and systems

The computer implemented method of claim l, further comprising:

• subscribing to the real-time data for the attributes of at least one data object;
• receiving the real time data;
• representing the real time data on at least one presentation cell;
• responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on at least one presentation cell.

A computer implemented supervisory control and data acquisition system for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the system comprising:

• at least one virtual application service including:
• a communications gateway communicatively coupled to selected ones of the field devices to receive real time data from the field devices, the real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with the field devices, the communications gateway converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;
• a plurality of application cells, each application cell coupled to the communications gateway to receive the standardized real time data for at least one of the field devices and apply an inferencing operation thereto to produce derived real time data;
• an object server communicatively coupled to the plurality of application cells to receive the derived real time data and to store the derived real time data in a plurality of data objects, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;
• and
• a personal agent framework including:
• at least one personal agent, each personal agent receiving the derived real time data from the object server, each personal agent including at least one presentation cell, each presentation cell providing a representation of at least one attribute of a field device that is dynamically responsive to real time changes in the attribute, each presentation cell receiving the derived real time data for the attribute, and mapping the derived real time data to an output representation.

In a supervisory control and data acquisition system for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the system comprising at least one personal agent that receives real time data corresponding to the attributes and maps the real time data to an output representation, a computer-implemented method for customizing the at least one personal agent, the method comprising:

• associating the personal agent with a service agent, wherein
• the service agent is communicatively coupled to an object server to receive the real time data of one of a plurality of data objects in response to the data object being updated;
• and
• the object server is configured to receive the real time data from the field devices and to store the real time data in the plurality of data objects, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;
• creating at least one presentation cell to provide a representation of at least one attribute of a field device that is dynamically responsive to real time changes in the attribute, the at least one presentation cell receiving the real time data for the attribute, and to map the real time data to an output representation;
• and
• associating the at least one presentation cell with a data object in the service agent.

A computer program product stored in a computer readable medium for controlling a computer to perform a method for publishing supervisory and control data for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

• receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;
• converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;
• processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;
• storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;
• and
• publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the host computer to access the derived real time data.

A computer implemented method for providing supervisory and control data for managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

• on a host system:
• receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;
• converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;
• processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;
• storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;
• publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the host computer to access the derived real time data;
• on a client device:
• subscribing to the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object;
• receiving the derived real time data;
• representing the derived real time data on presentation cells;
• and
• responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on a presentation cell.

A computer implemented method for providing supervisory and control data for, managing distributed field devices that control or monitor physical or logical entities, the field devices having attributes representative of states of the entities, the method comprising:

• on a first host system:
• receiving from the distributed field devices real time data formatted according to a communications protocol associated with each field device, such that real time data received from at least two field devices has different data formats;
• converting the received real time data to standardized real time data in a standard data format independent of the field devices that specifies for each item of real time data a content and source of the real time data;
• processing the standardized real time data to produce derived real time data;
• storing in a central host computer the derived real time data in individual data objects in an object server, each data object having attributes corresponding to attributes of a field device;
• publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of each data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the first host computer to access the derived real time data;
• on a second host system:
• subscribing to first host system to obtain the derived real time data for the attributes of at least one of the data objects;
• receiving from the first host system the derived real time data of a subscribed data object;
• publishing the derived real time data for the attributes of the subscribed data object to allow software processes executing on computers remote from the second host computer to access the derived real time data;
• on a client device:
• subscribing to the second host system to obtain derived real time data for the attributes of at least one of the data objects;
• receiving from the second host system the derived real time data;
• representing the derived real time data on at least one presentation cell on the client device;
• and
• responsive to a change in the published derived real time data, dynamically updating a representation of the change in the attributes of the field device by mapping the derived real time data to an output representation on a presentation cell.