Telling a professional, any professional, that better data is the key to doing more with less is hopefully superfluous by this point. However, it might be interesting reading about new ways to capture previously out of reach data that enables companies to do more with less. More reliable service, more efficient production and distribution, more compliant, etc., with less down time and less waste. At a fundamental level, SCADA, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, can do all of this, and the actionable part of SCADA is data.
{^widget|(widget_displayname)Inline+Quote+Widget|(author)Steve+Graves|(quote)%22In+the+context+of+a+mission-critical+SCADA+system+using+a+real-time+operating+system+(RTOS)%2c+the+term+%27real-time%27+means+a+guarantee+of+temporal+consistency%2c+not+%27real-fast%27+or+streaming+data%2c+that+might+be+fast%2c+but+offers+no+temporal+guarantees.%22|(name)MVCInlineQuoteWidget|(width)|(height)^} Utilizing the data in mission-critical SCADA systems implies the use of a database management system (DBMS). Capturing the data in these systems will require a DBMS that can guarantee that the system’s state accurately reflects the state of the external environment it is controlling, within set timing constraints, at all times.
In other words, one that can work cooperatively with the operating system’s scheduler so that the entire operation—the sensor access and the database access - either succeeds or is rejected as one. In either case, the system retains temporal data consistency and a system failure is avoided. In the context of a mission-critical SCADA system using a real-time operating system (RTOS), the term “real-time” means a guarantee of temporal consistency, not “real-fast” or streaming data, that might be fast, but offers no temporal guarantees. There is nothing in a traditional DBMS that maintains external or temporal consistency, thus the need for a hard real-time database management system that has the features necessary to make that guarantee.
The latest DBMS technology offers transaction managers that work in concert with RTOS schedulers, and also support data management in Asymmetric MultiProcessing (AMP) architecture systems. These systems are typically composed of two CPUs of differing architecture, typically executing different operating systems (e.g., INTEGRITY and Linux), and a large amount of memory shared by the CPUs that can be used for an in-memory database available to both CPUs.
This edge system can then manage the sensor data in a time-series database that will facilitate more reliable service, more efficient production and distribution, more compliant, etc., with less down time and less waste. A hard real-time database management system with support for AMP architectures offers companies the key to the data that is under-utilized in mission-critical SCADA systems.