SCADA integration

There are several ways to integrate the message sending feature of INS into a SCADA alarming project.

You may choose between

• an internal integration from inside the SCADA application
• an internal integration through ActiveX
• an external integration through DDE

Internal integration from inside the SCADA application

With this you use the scripting facility of the corresponding SCADA application to send messages out of a trigger. The SCADA application detects the alarm and then executes a call to the INS command line utility (SendMsg.exe) to submit the message.

If you are using WonderWare InTouch, you'll find a StepByStep instruction here.
Also all other SCADA applications have a mean of calling external applications from their alarm events.

Advantage

Tags, alarm messages, limits, etc. only need to be defined once

Disadvantage

Requires knowledge of the SCADA scripting language

 

Internal integration through ActiveX

Most SCADA applications support ActiveX to access its functionality.
In INS you configure a timer script (Designer.exe) that calls periodically a script. Inside the script you can use ActiveX to remote control the SCADA application and access its Alarm DB. There you can extract the required information of the active alarms and send the alarm message through the "Send message" cell of the script.

Advantage

Tags, alarm messages, limits, etc. only need to be defined once

Disadvantage

Requires knowledge of the VBS scripting language (Visual Basic)

External integration through DDE

By using our DDE scanner Check-it, you can periodically scan the values of the defined SCADA tags. If the value exceeds certain parameters, CheckIt will then submit the alarm messages.

Advantage

Very easy integration of a small number of tags. The tags can be collected from different SCADA Systems or any other application that supports DDE.

Disadvantage

Tags, alarm messages, limits, etc. need to be redefined separately inside CheckIt.