The introduction of realism into SCADA mimic diagrams using object oriented techniques and C++

This project shows how an interactive object based graphical user interface for a plant supervision or control application may be implemented using state-of-the-art software languages and tools. In many current plant supervisory, control and data acquisition systems (SCADA) data presentation is limited to archaic character based graphics and text based prompts with little or no use of pointing devices. With the emergence of object-oriented programming languages and graphics function libraries this project shows how a decisive upgrade in the graphics for these systems may be achieved, thereby bringing realism into plant mimic diagrams. The mimic diagrams created in this project consist of a static background, acquired by the use of scanning devices or paint packages, and a dynamic background of icons, generated using object-oriented C++ classes. The project is an object-oriented application and hence illustrates the object-oriented paradigm. The thesis introduces the area of supervisory, control and data acquisition systems. It examines graphic standards and operating system options, and highlights the need for a user friendly extensible graphic interface to telemetry systems. It also shows how object-orientation should provide for systems that are not only easier to extend and maintain but may also spawn parts which may be used for future projects. The thesis, based on experience gained throughout the project, examines C++, classes, inheritance, problems associated with C++ environments and the dangers of product incompatibility. It discusses graphic elements, such as bitmaps, icons and menus, and shows how object-orientation may be applied to them. It expounds on real-time considerations and icon animation and details the full project implementation including compilation and memory management systems used. Finally it points to the future, to the impact of object-oriented programming on technical management, to object-oriented databases and the object-oriented SCADA workstation of the future, and to changes imminent in C++ itself

Integration, management and communication of heterogeneous design resources with WWW technologies

Recently, advanced information technologies have opened new pos-sibilities for collaborative designs. In this paper, a Web-based collaborative de-sign environment is proposed, where heterogeneous design applications can be integrated with a common interface, managed dynamically for publishing and searching, and communicated with each other for integrated multi-objective de-sign. The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is employed as an implementation tool to enable integration and communication of design application programs; and the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used as a common data descriptive language for data exchange between heterogeneous applications and for resource description and recording. This paper also intro-duces the implementation of the system and the encapsulating issues of existing legacy applications. At last, an example of gear design based on the system is il-lustrated to identify the methods and procedure developed by this research

Requirements analysis of the VoD application using the tools in TRADE

This report contains a specification of requirements for a video-on-demand (VoD) application developed at Belgacom, used as a trial application in the 2RARE project. The specification contains three parts: an informal specification in natural language; a semiformal specification consisting of a number of diagrams intended to illustrate the informal specification; and a formal specification that makes the requiremants on the desired software system precise. The informal specification is structured in such a way that it resembles official specification documents conforming to standards such as that of IEEE or ESA. The semiformal specification uses some of the tools in from a requirements engineering toolkit called TRADE (Toolkit for Requirements And Design Engineering). The purpose of TRADE is to combine the best ideas in current structured and object-oriented analysis and design methods within a traditional systems engineering framework. In the case of the VoD system, the systems engineering framework is useful because it provides techniques for allocation and flowdown of system functions to components. TRADE consists of semiformal techniques taken from structured and object-oriented analysis as well as a formal specification langyage, which provides constructs that correspond to the semiformal constructs. The formal specification used in TRADE is LCM (Language for Conceptual Modeling), which is a syntactically sugared version of order-sorted dynamic logic with equality. The purpose of this report is to illustrate and validate the TRADE/LCM approach in the specification of distributed, communication-intensive systems

Domain-specific languages for ecological modelling

The primary concern of an ecological modeller is to construct a model that is mathematically correct and that correctly represents the essence of a natural system. When models are published as software, it is moreover in the hope of capturing an audience who will use and appreciate the model. For that purpose, the model software must be provided with an intuitive, flexible and expressive user interface. A graphical user interface (GUI) is the commonly accepted norm but in this review we suggest, that a domain-specific language (DSL) in many cases would provide as good an interface as a GUI, or even better. We identified only 13 DSLs that have been used in ecological modelling, revealing a general ignorance of DSLs in the ecological modelling community. Moreover, most of these DSLs were not formulated for the ecological modelling domain but for the broader, generic modelling domain. We discuss how DSLs could possibly fill out a vacant niche in the dominant paradigm for ecological modelling, which is modular, object-oriented and often component-based. We conclude that ecological modelling would benefit from a wider appreciation of DSL methodology. Especially, there is a scope for new DSLs operating in the rich concepts of ecology, rather than in the bland concepts of modelling generics