The network transparency concept in Fieldbus based distributed systems

In this paper, the authors discuss the analysis of how activities are executed at the lowest level of the manufacturing networks hierarchy. At this level, a real-time distributed database (RTDD) provides a logical link between local applications. The role of the Fieldbus network is to link local sites enabling their interactions and preserving RTDD temporal and spatial consistency. Specific characteristics of Fieldbus supported RTDDs, such as a “deterministic transaction subset”, allow one to introduce the “network transparency” concept which is the basis of a proposed overall system development. An [Iso, SC5] based model is presented, providing an efficient method to describe the network transparency concept into standardised description techniques