APPLICATION BUILDER FOR INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION

• US 20100083229A1
• Filed: 09/30/2008
• Published: 04/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ICS Triplex ISaGRAF Inc. (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: ICS Triplex ISaGRAF Inc. (Rockwell Automation, Inc.)
• Inventors: Brunet, Gilles, Laliberte, Jean-Francois, Larouche, Olivier, Darveau, Frederic, Chouinard, Julien, Trang, Chan-Dara, Lavallee, Denis
• Granted Patent: US 8,359,573 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/629 to features or functions of an application
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2101 Auditing as a secondary aspect

Abstract

A control system development platform is provided. The platform includes a shell component adapted to support development of a control systems application. An abstract model is associated with the shell component to facilitate development of the control systems applications.

Claims

1. A control system development platform, comprising:

a shell component adapted with an abstract model to support development of a control systems application; and

a manager component operative with the shell component, the manager component controls component access to the control systems application.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a license object that includes a serialized collection of command features, permissions, and constraints.

3. The system of claim 2, the command feature is a unit of action including add, update, delete, or set bounds.

4. The system of claim 3, the command feature is optionally related to a constraint that specifies a condition or availability status, the condition includes enabled, disabled, or hidden.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a license that defines events or delegate types.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a license provider that includes methods to activate license keys from a web site.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a license editor to display or modify available features, permissions, or constraints.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a role manager that employs an abstract model for user roles and authentication or to provide mappings of roles.

9. The system of claim 8, the abstract model provides interfaces that define properties and methods utilized for user role management.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a user role editor to display available user groups, set group authentication, and associate features received from a license provider or a feature matrix.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising a feature matrix that dynamically enables, disables, or hides, one or more features of a control system solution.

12. The system of claim 11, the feature matrix is exposed via a menu update, a tool bar update, a public method invocation, a property setter, or within validation methods.

13. The system of claim 11, the feature matrix creates a permission set for each feature declared by loaded modules.

14. The system of claim 13, the permission set aggregates license, user role or element status permission objects.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising a custom feature that is considered part of the permission set.

16. A control software development method, comprising:

adapting a shell component to an abstract model;

interfacing to the shell component and the abstract model; and

controlling access to components developed by the shell component via a license manger or a feature matrix.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising adapting a user role component with the shell component and the abstract model.

18. The system of claim 16, the feature matrix includes enabled, disabled, visible, hidden, checked, or unchecked states.

19. The system of claim 16, further comprising creating a permissions set from the feature matrix.

20. A control software development method, comprising:

means for interfacing to an abstract model that is employed in an industrial control software development platform;

means for defining user roles within the abstract model; and

means for controlling access rights to the abstract model.