The release of OpenSCADA, an open SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, version 0.9 is a stable industrial release of the long-term support (LTS).
The main purpose of the release is to provide an updated and stable platform for building integrated automation systems and other adjacent solutions for the community of users and developers of the free software. Also, the release is intended to become an actual and solid foundation for commercial solutions building.
The release is the next release of the stable branch for which, over a long period of time, there provided the technical support from developers and releasing of updates in the form of public builds for the main and stable environments of Linux, as well as operational builds for holders of packages of the technical support. The life cycle of the previous release 0.8.0 LTS stops from its latest update, right before the first builds of 0.9 LTS packages.
It was at this version that the final transition to the Work/LTS development scheme took place, that is, the development is carried out within the working version and on its basis periodically released the stable releases, which, in turn and in parallel, are updated by the back-porting compatible changes from the working version. The initiating transition took place in 2013, when the current stable version was recognized as 0.8.0 LTS and the working as 0.9 Work. Currently, 0.9 LTS is announced as a stable version, and 1 Work as a working version.
In general, the new stable version is the result of six years of development, implementation to various solutions, stabilization and exploitation of OpenSCADA in its work branch, which is currently being released as a stable one. All this time updates for 0.8.0 LTS continued to be released and what will be done for the announced 0.9 LTS.
This document is a generalization of the Change Log, starting with the zero revision of the previous LTS version, through its updates and ending with the current one. The document is intended to briefly and clearly show the new features of OpenSCADA. You can read in detail the changes in the "ChangeLog" file of distributive packages or from the source: http://oscada.org/svn/tags/openscada_0.9/ChangeLog.
The OpenSCADA project was founded by Roman Savochenko in 2003 as a free implementation of the SCADA system or the Human Machine Interface (HMI), based on its thorough projecting during 2002 and the experience of using and developing a commercial SCADA system to this.
SCADA or HMI systems are generally designed and used to carry out human operational control over the work of complex and responsible technological equipment and processes of various manufacturing enterprises.
At the time of announcement of 0.9 LTS, OpenSCADA is a developed SCADA/HMI system, which is quite widely used as in the direct destination and, due to its flexibility, in many related industries and it can definitely be called more general — a dynamic system of working with data in the real time.
The number of the stable version of OpenSCADA is less than one only because its purpose was claimed multiplatform, to achieve which in the planned volume is scheduled for the next stable release number 1. In general, the objectives of OpenSCADA are:
For actual implementations, where at least one implementation is known and with a short list of which from the project participants you can read through this link, belong:
With some restrictions and improvements, largely in the user's internal environment, OpenSCADA can be used in the following areas:
The release 0.8.0 LTS was released in April 2012 and during these six years it received 20 updates, which, in total, corrected over 500 errors and added many improvements that do not violate the compatibility of library databases and configurations.
The configuration and library databases of 0.8.0 LTS were generally frozen due to large incompatible changes at 0.9 Work, for OpenSCADA launch methods, and the imperfection of distributing the library databases at the release date of 0.8.0 LTS. Therefore, the upgrade and transition to 0.9 LTS will be non-trivial, although 0.9 LTS provides everything possible for simplification this procedure. Updating 0.9 LTS to the planned future 1 LTS will no longer be so complex and in fact can only turn into a formal change in the version of the working branch, since now it is planned to upgrade all, including the library databases.
The development of OpenSCADA, after the previous LTS version and within the Work branch, was mainly through deep stabilization and through the practical adaptation with elements of the expansion of the existing functional, aimed to provide a stable and reliable environment for the industrial automation and related tasks, and therefore, there was no clearly defined plan. But three years before this release, such a plan appeared and made the following tasks, as seen from the general development plan:
These tasks are done and some details about them are given below.
The new stable version of OpenSCADA has gained significant system-wide extensions, increased stability in work and productivity, and also received significant improvements to the graphical user interface and its environment, such as: advanced configuration, documentation, accessible directly from the program (offline and online), and which significantly revised and updated.
The common part of documentation of the project has been moved to a new Wiki, based on MediaWiki, and a significant amount of this part has been revised and translated into three languages — English, Ukrainian, Russian. For the pages transferring a converting procedure from the WackoWiki engine dialect to MediaWiki was created which was completely written in the internal programming language of OpenSCADA, and is used to transfer large volume of the old Wiki. Format the offline documentation has been changed from static PDF-files, that were not updated after the previous LTS version, to HTML-files which dynamically generated from the actual knowledge base (Wiki) of the project, and have actual cross-links between pages and links on the online-documentation, for exclusively external materials. The offline-documentation is also generated by a specially-written procedure in the internal language of OpenSCADA, which, along with the procedure of the Wiki-dialects converting and complex testing the release OpenSCADA, is a bright sign of power and the current level of development of the internal language of OpenSCADA.
Within the old Wiki, after the release 0.8.0 LTS, some documents were added and updated, and with the transferring to the new Wiki, in addition to revision and translation of the main part of the documentation, the overall unification of its structure was made for reasons of: multilingualism (English as a primary language), the logic of the organization, the convenience of translation and the ability to remove duplicate articles from the official site, which at the moment are simply used with the Wiki. We will separately note the significantly expanded main documents:
The original language (English) was completely revised in original messages of the program and mainly for the main articles of the documentation-Wiki OpenSCADA, which is currently making OpenSCADA an adequately favorable for an audience that does not understand the original language — Ukrainian or Russian. And, along with the full realization of the dynamic translation mechanism, it is possible to build on the basis of OpenSCADA the dynamically multilingual user interfaces that you can see, in particular, on the publicly available Web-interface of the dynamic simulators of TP: AGLKS, Boiler.
The Work version, based on this stable, for the first time defined the OpenSCADA projects conception and implemented a command line script for launching and creating OpenSCADA projects. Immediately before the release of this version, the concept of the OpenSCADA project was finally assigned to the folder with the data of the separate project and the configuration file of OpenSCADA, and the implementation of the project manager was integrated directly into OpenSCADA. Consequently, this LTS version has a developed concept for the project manager that allows to flexibly work with them and eliminate the dangerous possibility of multiple launches with the general data of one project.
The Work version also introduced modification of the modules versions at modification in the code of the module and just before they are uploaded to the source repository, and therefore, the versions of the OpenSCADA modules of this release clearly reflect the overall level of development and stability.
In the process of implementing works on the Work branch, based on this stable, there were introduced the repositories of Linux distribution packages with the OpenSCADA builds, which until now were only provided as separate packages. That significantly simplified the deployment of OpenSCADA and keeping it up to date. Then automatic builder of these packages was created, which currently has up to 100 targets, and which greatly simplified the release of updates for both branches, that is the Work and this stable. Therefore, this LTS version provides packages collections for the main Linux environments and the entire history of public updates will be saved.
To the OpenSCADA packages collections there also provide builds of the live disks of the quick acquaintance and deployment of OpenSCADA together with the system environment. Currently, they have received a formal background in the form of the Linux Automation Distribution of OpenSCADA.
OpenSCADA builds and packages are accompanied by a number of open and free materials of the internal environment of the program, that is, the development of the data acquisition and processing layer, graphic representation elements and whole-complex projects of the TP simulators. These materials are provided as SQLite database files and include:
Hosting of the project in general and materials of 0.9 LTS in particular were transferred to own project server, where additionally were deployed: the demonstration Web-interfaces of OpenSCADA simulators, the project of server monitoring and smart home based on OpenSCADA and builder of the packages of the OpenSCADA repositories.
The resolution of internal data of the integer type of the OpenSCADA environment is increased to 64 bits. In general, the internal data of OpenSCADA, with error value reservation (EVAL) for each, is unified by common types: logical, integer, real, string, and object. Which primarily concerns the data sources.
To the OpenSCADA core, its own protocol and all nodes that work with remote stations OpenSCADA; added the ability to "raise" the nodes of OpenSCADA that are located behind other nodes and, as a rule, in another network. What generally allows you to centrally manage the OpenSCADA network at any level of the hierarchy.
This version of OpenSCADA has gained in-depth support and ability to adapt to different platforms. This was mainly due to the adaptation to work on the Android software platform and the restoration of the building and work with ucLibC, and that it is planned to be used for further adaptation to work on QNX and MS Windows software platforms.
In addition to direct work (natively) on different platforms, the Web-interface has been significantly expanded, which currently implements all the general features of the concept of the Visualization Control Area (VCA).
Significant stabilization of the OpenSCADA core, and the overall program, has been achieved through the unification of internal resources control and the expansion of capabilities of the user debugging. In general, the user diagnostic and debugging expanded:
Almost all of the OpenSCADA modules have been subjected to deep and comprehensive stabilization and many have been optimized, of which especially should be noted:
Reliability of the redundant station on an integrated solution scale, more precisely the preservation of the history data, was enhanced by the extension of the redundancy mechanism, which potentially involves reserving any subsystem and currently implements the subsystems "Data acquisition" and "Archives-History".
And, for the program as a whole, a series of formal comprehensive tests was executed, that was pre-expanded in the internal integrated testing procedure of the OpenSCADA release. On the basis of these tests, several bugs were detected which were fixed.
Given the key role of the data acquisition in this type of software, this feature, in the person of the subsystem "Data acquisition" and its modules, has received significant improvements, of which particular attention should be paid: shifting emphasis on the extending supported data sources from implementation of individual modules of the subsystem "Data acquisition" in the system language "C/C++", to their implementation in the OpenSCADA environment and in its internal language — logical level of OpenSCADA. That is, at the logical level of OpenSCADA, can be and implements everything that: uses the network to access the data, does not require to use specific libraries and functions, and is not very complicated. Currently there implemented in this way:
Given the increased role of the logical level of OpenSCADA, there has been an increase in the requirements to the flexibility of the data model of the data source, which was satisfied by:
The OpenSCADA internal programming language has made significant improvements and, at the moment, satisfies all the requirements of the areas of application OpenSCADA. Many of these enhancements came in the previous version of 0.8.0 LTS, and some could not get there because of the backward compatibility or lack of stability at that time. Of these significant improvements, it should be noted again: increasing the resolution of the data of the OpenSCADA internal environment of the integer type up to 64 bits and preserving the context of execution of the internal procedures.
In general, the graphical environment has been significantly developed, and the main one has been the extension of the module of starting the Qt-interface, as the basis for the rest local interface modules. First of all, this module and the core of OpenSCADA are adapted to allow the Qt-library to run in the main thread of the program, eliminating many of the problems associated with execution in the non-main thread, and also provides work with version 5 of this library. Secondly, this module took on the role of the selecting interface of the OpenSCADA projects when it launches and switches, as well as creating new ones. And thirdly, because of its primacy to launching Qt, it received the function of controlling the appearance of the program regardless of the graphical environment and the possibility of its launch-closing in the system tray. In general, it has made of the possibility to customize OpenSCADA to personal user requirements and to adapt it to very specific environments such as Android.
Notable improvements have been made to the Qt and Web configuration modules, which are particularly noteworthy:
Notable improvements were also made to the Visual Control Area (VCA), consisting of all its modules:
All Web modules, in general, have the opportunity to change the view by topics, through the system-wide interfaces of the protocol HTTP and its mechanisms for query processing and response forming. Also, they all have the support of dynamic translation of the interface, which is especially relevant for multi-user Web-interfaces, and what you can see on the demo Web-interfaces of the OpenSCADA models: AGLKS, Boiler. There is also a mechanism for the distribution of access to the pages, which, in particular, allows to differentiate access to the Web-modules in general.
The new version has added new modules and significantly updated a number of present ones:
On the way to the new release 0.9 LTS of industrial use, much work has been done to stabilize, expand functionality, and expand adaptability to work on alternative platforms. All this in general has further expanded the scope of full use of OpenSCADA at all levels of industrial automation systems and related areas of automation and automatic.
LTS versions of OpenSCADA are not blank, they are really supported all the time until the next LTS version, and support for this version will be further expanded with the service updates. Also, the emphasis and implementation policy of the LTS version, which was previously recommended to upgrade configurations with frozen library databases, will be shifted to the using priority on a wide range of new solutions.
In the emergence of the new industrial version of OpenSCADA 0.9 LTS took part:
Further development efforts will focus on: