Interoperable technologies for automation

The demand for integration of all levels of plant control into a single system has been increasing during last years. However the plants have been built on heterogeneous communication technologies that use various approaches for representation of data. Heterogeneity of the plants is faced using combinations of various software and hardware gateways. The presented paper describes why the use of gateways is not a good solution in general, and presents a technology that can be the ultimate solution of interoperability issues in automation. The paper presents disadvantages of gateway based interoperability solutions in heterogeneous control environments and emphasizes possible interoperable solution. The proposed solution is based on emerging open technologies that promise to deliver interoperable services for exchange of all kinds of data among computer systems without the need to perform frustrating conversions between disparate protocols and incompatible data structures. Moreover the proposed interoperability solution will guarantee both interoperability in the field of process automation, and interoperability with future applications of ubiquitous computing too. Disadvantages of proposed solution compared to present communication technologies are mentioned as well.