Nathan

Wussup? Welcome...

This one's gonna be fun I should have known better than to ask you of all people for more specifics. Remember that I was sided with Open Source software at the beginning of this thread...I'll try to play the devil's advocate. First off, I'm not going to count FactoryPMI in the "normal" industrial software. It might as well fall half way between both - the list of open source software used in the license agreement is pretty extensive, many of which you mentioned: Apache (web server), JGroups (web clustering), JFreeChart (graphing), Jython (Scripting), JEdit (text editor), and various other open source components. OK - charting. Good example! I'll give Open Source a big victory because, to my knowledge, none of the HMI vendors use a charting package that's worth a darn. FactoryPMI uses a custom version of JFreeChart (which is an awesomely powerful open source chart project). I've also written custom PHP web pages that use JPGraph (also a good open source project). However, Microsoft Excel charts are about as good as it gets in terms of bang for your buck (although not totally relevant in HMI discussions). I know there are a lot of very powerful commercial charting libraries like this one. SCADA vendors have chosen to do their own things. Retarded decision, but I don't think you could decidedly argue that Open Source charting is better than commercial. That is a case where you'll get better results if you have problems.

Wow - first post since you joined in 2004! Welcome!

Contact tech support...

Paul, I was asking the benefit of "upgrading" to the FactoryTalk licensing. What I really wonder is, do people really not know how the Rockwell licensing keys work? I've known how to backup/duplicate licenses in seconds without any special software for about 10 years. Don't worry Rockwell - I've been a good boy: sold lots of your software, never mentioned it on the forums and won't talk specifics. I can't believe that nobody has figured this out with so many posts (not this one) that dance so closely around it - a few Rockwell KB articles basically tell you. I have to think that others keep this one tight out of respect. In any event, you can freely move licenses across network drives with the legacy system. The USB thumb drives can be more difficult because some don't have the right volume labels or whatever they need to work. Workarounds do exist. Can anyone verify what I'm saying? I would probably disclose specifics to a moderator or paul in confidence. I still really think that more people know about this but are keeping their silence. That's why I thought that Rockwell chose to go to a centralized key system several years ago and I'm surprised the legacy system still goes so strong.

For now, I agree with you. However, the face of open source software is changing. I predict more corporate owned/sponsored/run open source projects that sell top notch support plans. Sun and Red Hat come to mind. These projects tend to have mature communities that offer high level support, which is typically free. That said, as I stated in my very first and subsequent posts, companies like Kepware have their place. They provide an outstanding product and stand behind it. I see these companies co-existing with the evolving open source communities, although I think it would behoove them to embrace and support open source like Sun does. I'm interested in changing the fixed perception in this industry that open source is inherently inferior because it's "free". Companies can profit by supporting these products and selling "higher end" versions. They get the benefit of free advertising/marketing/training/support communities. Open source projects can thrive entirely without corporate backing. Paul - the bulk of your complaints with commercial industrial software come down to specific problems and company responses that you've dealt with. A software project, commercial or open source, can vary in quality from total crap to very nicely written. The quality of updates/bug fixes/etc can vary to the same extent. I think it's fair to say that either commercial or open source could range in each of these aspects. IMO, the real problem with industrial software is that it's such a niche market. The biggest players, both commercial and open source are puny. I have had my fair share of gripes at certain industrial software companies. I've also dealt with open source projects that are a total waste of time. I've also dealt with the opposite of both cases. It really comes down to who you're dealing with and the quality of their product/support.

That's the retro-encabulator...(for Rockwell's version)

I die laughing every time I see that...

It's doubtful that you'll get a good response from a post like this. You may have better luck asking specific questions that show that you've made some level of effort.

MySQL is GPL. Your description sounds correct. edit - please read this. It's a fascinating interview with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz on their open source business strategy. Sun's been doing well in the last few years. According to this, They've been adding to their open source collection including: Open Office, Open Solaris, GlassFish, NetBeans and Open Java. They also cite huge customers like: Google, FaceBook, Nokia and just about anyone who has a WordPress blog or server. They're obviously an integral portion of the oh-so-popular LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

What benefit do you gain from doing this?

You know it! Back up btw. http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=36186

Good luck! What are you asking for?

Check out FactorySQL. It does require an OPC Server. The full blown version will also do "transaction-y" things like RSSQL does, alarming, and a whole lot more. They're working on a free, strictly data logging version. You can download a resettable 2 hour trial here: http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=758

Yeah, it was down earlier. It's also been pretty slow and timing out lately. I'm sure (hoping) they'll get it running solid quickly.

Does anybody here care? I do! I think open source software is awesome and hope that it has a growing place in the "Industrial World". I wouldn't say this has much to do with PLCs directly, but it does have to with Enterprise Integration. I read about this on slashdot and commented about it in my blog.

I used to be all about VNC years ago. Hate to say it, but if you're in a Windows environment Remote Desktop is just better. I use Gotomeeting all the time though! It's not free, but very useful. IT departments will usually throw a fit about leaving a Gotomypc connection open (or block it), but be ok with gotomeeting. Works out well for: presentations, training, and troubleshooting if you happen to be across the Internet without anything pre-configured between 2 or more users.

Oh, I think that's a more unusual problem since you're connecting with Logix. Tim's questions are dead on. Also provide any additional info about specific error messages, logs, etc. But I'll just do what you would - a Google search. I have a feeling it's a "contact Rockwell" question - unless you happen to be running Vista...

What's the problem exactly ("not working")? Which program are you using to connect to RSLinx? I have seen instances where an OPC client can only communicate with RSLinx when it's set up to run as an "application". My guess is that it boils down to Windows COM security settings.

Do they both have Internet access? Setting up a permanent VPN tunnel may be a viable option. Then each device could see the other as if it were local. My experience with AB modems were that they were: expensive, complicated, and didn't work well (an understatement). May be better now, but I wouldn't recommend them. I was successful with a project about 6 years ago that used phone gateways on each end to automatically establish an Ethernet connection. The 3COM devices were cheap and really easy to set up, but they were "home" devices primarily for sharing a 56k modem with a small home network. In that particular case the (commercial) phone bill to the customer ended up being outrageous.

Thought I mentioned this earlier, but guess not - Textpad is the bomb! Free version is great! I paid the $29 to remove the banner when it starts up, but more to support them because the product is so useful. Another good text editor is Ultra Edit. Works particularly good for: macros, programming, or editing HTML. http://www.textpad.com

Bob provided a good answer for concurrent connections to the PLC. You can get around this by using an HMI package that uses a number of PLC connections that itsn't based on HMI runtime clients (distributed or web based). Granted these software packages may be a bit heavy hitting for a Micro, but it's good info that's applicable for any PLC series. Adding concurrent HMI clients will not add connections to the ML in a well designed distributed HMI. It won't add read traffic if it's reading the same values that the other clients are. Obviously if a client is reading a new tag range, that will cause a PLC read. Writes should occur as if they were coming from any HMI node. This is how FactoryPMI with SQLTags works. RSView SE should work that way as should the heavy hitter "distributed" version of Intouch.

So here's the deal - I suggested a free datalogging version of FactorySQL and the guys at Inductive Automation sound like they're willing to consider it! What I need from you is: a thumbs up that it'd be useful as described, answers to my questions, and ideas on how it could be made better. You don't have to get into the "knitty gritty" for a good response. A simple "yes" or "no" on the concept and why would be helpful. 1. FactorySQL currently supports: MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, DB2, and, I think, Access. 1a. I'm thinking that a .CSV group to support logging to a spreadsheet (format) would be useful. It would need to be able to write to a network path and automatically separate files by date. The file lock aspect of users opening the spreadsheet (instead of a copy) seems pesky. 2. Logging is done with a "dynamic schema" (wide) approach where tags are represented as columns and each sample of everything is a row. It tends to perform better than the alternative, especially with things like table compression. The disadvantage is that adding tags to existing data tables creates an inefficient column of NULL data. 3. Some other packages use a (tall) "Static Schema" table design, which has a column for the: time, tag path, and value. This is more of the textbook design for tables, but not so good at historical data. It often takes up more space (time column for each datapoint instead of set of points) and is almost always slower to query for lots of data regardless of how you have it keyed (consider querying a time that spans 50,000 sets of 25 out of your 50 datapoints - 1.25 million rows based on time and path, versus 50k rows with 26 columns of sequential data). The nice thing about a static schema approach is that you can change the points you're logging or your logging intervals easily without bothering anything else. FactorySQL supports this in a "Block Data Group", but I don't think it'd be useful in a free datalogging version. "Realtime" array writes make sense to do that - datalogging doesn't - except for the special case where you're trying to plug it into a pre-written application that expect the format to be just so. Correct me if I'm wrong here... 4. Based on the row level datalogging, writing on value changes isn't very meaningful. That really works in an optimized package where the trending/reporting utility knows what the logger is doing. I think it would be best to log based on a preset update rate. In my experience this performs well. And, data logged a variable rate sometimes creates problems with certain applications and looks deceptive when viewed in a spreadsheet. 5. Alarming - I don't know whether they'd be willing to include alarming functionality in a free version. The current setup creates and maintains a "realtime" alarm status table and an "alarm history" table. It sends email alerts that users typically set up to receive as text messages on their cell phones. Would this be significant to you beyond a datalogger? As an aside, I despise the practice of #1b (CSV logging) for most applications. I think that it'd be a great alternative for users who do the VBA DDE through RSLinx in Excel thing. I guess it does have it's places. What do you think?

I don't think that's true about the CSV data logging - or at least practical and known. I see posts about every other week asking how to do that (usually on plctalk).

You have no idea My fiber connection is a (shared for the building) symmetric 100 meg fiber connection! Oh yeah!