Enhancing the CS Framework for Distributed Control Systems

DIM as Communication Layer Earlier versions of CS allowed for distributed control systems but required the knowledge of the node name for each process variable. Moreover, a general built-in observer mechanism where many observers may register to receive updates of one published process variable was missing. The entire communication layer has been changed to DIM (Distributed Information Management) [2], which is a light weight protocol for inter-process communication based on TCP/IP. It follows the concept of named services. Clients may receive information from a service (observer pattern) or may send a command to a server (command pattern). Switching to DIM as communication layer was possible after implementing a LabVIEW interface for DIM. This drastically increased the performance in the communication layer of CS and solved a few other problems not mentioned here. Using a CS system with one million DIM services was tested successfully.