Keeping industrial systems and communicators up-to-date using interoperable communicating components and electronic data sheets

The remarkable technological advances in digital communications employed in the distributed control of technological processes have resulted in numerous standards and protocols for data transmission. The variety of data transmission standards and protocols have determined a considerable increase in the number of network adaptors, masters and access gates, each of them requiring its own function- and method-specific driver. In spite of many advantages offered by OPC, for instance, such as the regular and standard way in which software applications can collect and exchange process data, compatibility and additional data acquisition issues have not been entirely settled.