Method and apparatus for managing process control configuration

• Main Authors: Lewis Marty James, Lucas J. Michael, Jundt Larry O
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 22.11.2016
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; CONTROL OR REGULATING SYSTEMS IN GENERAL; CONTROLLING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; FUNCTIONAL ELEMENTS OF SUCH SYSTEMS; MONITORING OR TESTING ARRANGEMENTS FOR SUCH SYSTEMS ORELEMENTS; PHYSICS; REGULATING

Flexible configuration of process control systems or plants allows draft changes or modifications to be made to parent process objects, e.g., in a configuration environment, without automatically triggering corresponding instantiations and/or downloads of the parent process objects and/or their derived children objects into a run-time system. Parent objects to which draft changes are allowed may include class objects, instance objects, and/or library objects. One or more modifications to a process object may be saved as a draft, and multiple drafts for a same process object may be saved as different versions. Children objects may indicate the particular version of a parent object draft from which they are derived. A user may indicate that a particular draft or version is to be published or approved. Unpublished or unapproved drafts are prevented from being instantiated in the run-time system, whereas published or approved drafts are allowed to be instantiated.