Ignition, post release activity and OPC vendors

I was impressed with the Ignition by Inductive Automation product release webinar. The Inductive Automation team did a first class job introducing the company, Ignition product platform and architecture, and the motivation behind the shift to OPC-UA. In a nutshell, their vision of the future of industrial software is: standards based, IT friendly, and platform independent. Get DCOM out of here! We want a top notch, secure SCADA system that runs equally well on Linux, a mac, or any flavor/service pack of the Windows rainbow. The demonstration included a full server installation, which took about 2 minutes, and highlighted the drag and drop ease of the new SQLTags History feature, which is deceptively simple, yet powerful.

We've been getting a huge number of hits to the new website by a number of companies across the world. We've also been getting a lot of interest in when more drivers will be available, like Siemens, Modbus, and Automation Direct in addition to the existing Allen Bradley suite.  I suppose this isn't surprising considering that we're the only cross-platform OPC-UA server available. While it shouldn't be too long before we get those drivers developed, this brings me to my next point...

Where are the other OPC-UA servers? We're really looking forward to a more vibrant marketplace for OPC-UA products. Kepware says they'll be releasing their OPC-UA server soon - we're looking forward to being able to test it with Ignition. This really excites me because it brings their extensive PLC product line to the table via OPC-UA. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be cross platform.

So, how about it? OPC vendors: the gauntlet has been thrown. The industry wants OPC-UA products! And if they're cross platform, all the better. When will we start seeing them?

FireFox Download Day announced

Tuesday, 17JUN is Download Day (FireFox 3 if you havn't been paying attention)! Check out a graphical world pledge map here.

Do your part!

Mozilla aims to set a one day world Download record with the official release of Firefox 3. The date isn't set, but you can sign up to pledge to download it on day one here. I for one, love Firefox and have been running the beta for some time now.

New version of FactoryPMI released

FactoryPMI 3.1.1 now supports Java 5 and 6 and includes its own SSL support - I still promote the use of VPNs! As Carl points out, it's ironic that the current release of Java 6 has a known SSL bug - doww! The "standalone mode" option should help (non-clustering) users by detecting network settings in various environments.

I got a chance to play with the free FactoryPMI ActiveX plugin. It's pretty sweet! Lemme preface this with, "I hate ActiveX, Microsoft's failed attempt at Java applets that they've since dropped in favor of .NET". The cool thing is that ActiveX controls have access to Windows APIs and let you do cool things like embed IE, Adobe Acrobat, and MS Office instances in other apps - namely FactoryPMI! All the HMIs have been doing the ActiveX thing for years. IMO, embed an ActiveX control in IE that controls a physical device = bad. Use an embedded ActiveX control to read a pdf or Excel spreadsheet...fine. I'm going to cry if I see too many FactoryPMI users embed Software Toolbox-esque ActiveX controls in their applications. We can do better with native Javabeans!

Dec 12, 2007 - FactoryPMI 3.1.1 released. See full changelog here:
Release Notes Java 6 + SSL The main features of this release are SSL support and Java 6 support. Ironically, Java 6 (as of "Update 3") has a bug in its support for SSL. You can prevent Java 6 from being used for Clients and Designers by setting the Gateway System Settings property Allowed JREs to "1.5+". Sun tells us that this will be fixed in Java 6 update 4, to be released later in December.

ActiveX Plugin - This release also makes available a new free plugin, the ActiveX Plugin. This plugin adds new components to embed common Windows controls into FactoryPMI windows, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer, etc. You can find this plugin here.