Connecting Industrial Controllers to the Internet through Software Composition in Web Application Servers

The automation of all business processes and network management functions, and the Web-enabling of those information systems, is proceeding at a rapid pace. It seems inevitable that the monitoring and control of most industrial equipment and industrial controllers, shall become web- based as well. In general, this industrial equipment is controlled through binary protocols, and is not able to support modern Internet standards such as XML. In this contribution, a structured framework is presented to Web-enable the monitoring and control of various types of industrial equipment. It is both based on open software standards and component models, and on dedicated architectural design patterns. In order to describe the framework and its detailed design patterns, this contribution builds upon a recently proposed technique for the elaboration of architectural descriptions. The implementation of several management systems for various types of industrial equipment is described, and the results are discussed.