Eclipse NeoSCADA 0.1.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Release

0.1.0

Description

The first release of Eclipse SCADA.

The main focus is on the migration from openSCADA to Eclipse SCADA. Including cleanups, documentation, build infrastructure changes.

In addition bugs will be fixed.

Architectural Issues

Repository layout

The repositories were restructured during the initial code import from openSCADA. While we still wanted to have separate repositories, in order to separate several areas of functionality, we reduced the number of repositories and gave them more explanatory names. The new layout is described at https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA/Development/RepositoryLayout.

Switch build system to Tycho

In order to simplify the build process for people that are not familiar with setting up an PDE build the build system is now based on Eclipse Tycho using Maven. The new build system is described at https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA/Development/Build.

Chart Widget

Coming from the openSCADA project a custom chart widget implementation was brought in to the Eclipse SCADA project. The original reason for the custom implementation was the requirement to work in an SWT and Draw2D environment. Also was it a requirement that the chart widget "pulls" the data from some data source (depending on the current time frame selection), instead of having a data provider push all known data into the chart widget.

The modules were already placed in a separate repository in order to move the components to another project (e.g. Nebula) in the future.

Server Testing

Originally there was a functionality in the ESAC/OSTC that provided two sample inline servers for testing. However they had to be removed for the time being due to the restructuring and migration to Eclipse SCADA. Hower we plan to add them back in a following release.

Security Issues

There are no known security issues.

Non-Code Aspects

Documentation

Migrating documentation over to Eclipse SCADA was started. Some parts are still missing since they were done in a custom XML dialect (DocDocDoc). It will be converted during the next release (0.2.0) to some format more suitable for writing documentation.

The best source of information at the moment is the wiki at https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA.

Demo System

There is a demo system running at "demo.openscada.org" which is also described in the wiki at https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA/GettingStarted/DemoSystem.

Tutorials & Articles

The following items were created for the 0.1.0 release cycle:

  • https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA/Tutorials/EclipseMagazin – English version of the article published in the German Eclipse Magazine
  • https://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseSCADA/GettingStarted – Main area in the wiki covering all "Getting Started" pages
Usability Details

Most parts of the software are server side, background applications.

The parts that are UI based use the principles of the Eclipse platform.

ESAC (formerly OSTC)

The usability of the ESAC was enhanced by adding some new features (like the Item trace console).

Configurator

The configurator application is one bigger part of the system. It is an extension of the Eclipse IDE Platform by several functions regard the configuration of an Eclipse SCADA system setup. The main editing functionality used at the moment are generic EMF generated structured editors. While it is intended for a normal end-user, it does not provide the usabilty for an unexperienced end-user.

End of Life

The following components are considered deprecated.

NET / GMPP Protocol Stack

The "NET" (GMPP) based protocol is considered deprecated. It is still possible to provide NET based connections (client and server), but new functionalities are only added to NGP. Bug fixed will still be performed on NET.

The NET/GMPP protocol stack is scheduled to be removed after two more releases (after 0.3.0).

Configurator

The old configuration tool that was present in openSCADA was not ported over to Eclipse SCADA. It still is present in the 1.2.0 branch of openSCADA, but adaption have to be made to reflect the name change of properties to "org.eclipse.scada".

Instead the newer configuration tool should be used.

Standards

The release supports the following standard protocols (Support for those protocols is neither complete nor certified):

Modbus (TCP & RTU)

  • Analog and digital values can be read any written
  • Registers can be interpreted using different value format
  • Little endian and big endian formats are supported
  • String values are not supported at the moment
  • Eclipse SCADA can also provide internal values as a modbus slave

Siemens S7

  • PLCs can be accessed using a TCP connection to a CP
  • It is possible to read and write values
  • Data can be mapped to various value formats
  • Little endian and big endian formats are supported

REST API

  • There is a REST API which allows reading "realtime" data and issuing commands
Communities
  • Eclipse SCADA presented on the EclipseCon 2013 in Ludwigsburg.
  • The homepage for the project was created and provides some starting points.
  • The project is working in the Eclipse IoT Working Group in order to bring IoT projects closer together