Friday, March 31, 2006

Open networks I just received the first newsletter from the FDT Group. And it starts off with "truly open" protocol message. I, for one, am really getting tired of the backbiting and innuendo about which networking protocols are "truly open." FDT group true believers hint that Foundation Fieldbus and EDDL are run by and for Emerson Process, and therefore not truly open. Others hint that Profibus is just Siemens or ODVA (and ControlNet and EtherNet/IP) is a Rockwell Automation clone. Come on, guys. Get a life. They are all open networks. There are independent boards of directors, technical committees composed of engineers from many companies, hundreds of companies supporting the protocols. They all have their place--and in places where they compete, let the market decide. The FDT Group maintains that an "super" protocol is needed above EDDL in order to bring in legacy equipment and equipment other than typical process control devices onto the network. I've heard from the Fieldbus Foundation that FDT is unnecessary because you can do it all with EDDL and OPC. I've never personally programmed any of these things, so I can't give a technical opinion. However, I've got to believe that both approaches work. (A side note, though, I think it's imperative that OPC gets its new UA protocol out as soon as possible.) I doesn't matter what I think, though. Anyone out there using these protocols who cares to share the benefits and challenges of applying each? Maybe I can assemble a good article out of it. If you don't want a public comment, then just send an email. By the way, I noticed in the newsletter that the Group wants to make FDT an IEC standard. Is that perhaps the reason that Terry Blevins of Emerson Process is chair of a new ISA committee (SP 104) to standardize EDDL? [Updated. Hit wrong key in html coding. Sorry. Thanks, Laura.] 11:05:25 AM    comment []

More anniversary celebrations I'm trying to get through a backlog of information I've accumulated over the past two months of frenzied activity. The note yesterday about Palm's 10th anniversary jogged a memory and I found the release. This year marks 30 years of National Instruments and 20 years of its landmark PC-based graphical programming interface LabView. Dr. James Truchard (Dr. T) and Jeff Kodosky (Jeff K) have built an impressive company down in Austin. Learn more about the celebration. Another illustrious 30th anniversary is that little computer company started in a garage, Apple. 10:27:41 AM    comment []

Excellent blog on RSS. Jim Cahill of Emerson Process has one of the best blogs in the business right now. It's company-oriented (of course), but it's also informative and just technical enough. Here's an excellent discussion of RSS. Moving to More Efficient, Focused Information. Over the past 10 years, we've all benefited from the speed at which knowledge can be attained using the web and search engines to rapidly find things. One of the fairly recent innovations has been really simple syndication (RSS) technology, which provides us a way to subscribe to information to have it come to us, rather than the mode of seeking and finding. An October Yahoo! study indicates that the adoption rate is still quite low: Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS. I've been using it for over a year and it's amazing what I can learn about process automation, the key industries we serve, and even what other automation suppliers are up to. This RSS communications seems too valuable to keep such a secret. One of the things limiting adoption is that the Internet Explorer browser does not deal well with the cryptic XML looking code that is RSS. Anyone who has clicked on the little orange XML, RSS buttons sprouting all over the web see this gibberish looking code. This will change when Microsoft releases Vista and the next version of Office, but for now it takes some doing to use RSS. In the spirit of helping process manufacturing professionals see the value that we see with RSS, we have just published an RSS Starter Kit. The RSS Starter Kit gives you a quick what, why, and how to give it a try. I even narrated a demo to show how you could be up and going in 2 minutes with a number of feeds about our industry, hot topics, and even a couple of fun feeds. I believe you'll find the time investment worth it. Give it a try! Also be sure to check out how you can get a customized feed from Emerson Process Management based upon your preferences. With your RSS reader already in place, it's easy to add. By Jim Cahill . [Emerson Process Experts] 10:15:42 AM    comment []