"IDXSuite: Providing Robust Industrial Data Exchange Solutions"

DXSuite has been successfully providing robust industrial data exchange solutions to international blue chip companies for numerous years.  It bridges the gap between monitoring and control systems (with near instantaneous response typically used in industrial automation, advanced process control and telecommunications) with transactional business systems (varied response times, generally slower based on database technology). It provides facilities to enable data validation, data transformation, and seamless integration of legacy and disparate systems.   Modern enterprise systems for process control and monitoring face at least three challenges that IDXSuite is specifically designed to address:
 

These challenges must be successfully addressed before the solution can provide the quality of information required for an enterprise to be able to adapt and thrive in today’s fast changing business environment.

IDXSuite is typically used as a mission critical communications gateway facilitating real-time data exchange between one or more of the following systems via a number of driver modules:

• Process control system (DCS or PLC) such as Siemens, Foxboro, Modicon.

• MMI or SCADA systems such as Wonderware, Siemens, Intellution.

• Real-time Data Historians such as OSIsoft PI, AspenTech InfoPlus 21, and Wonderware Industrial SQL Server.

• Expert Systems such as Gensym G2 and Pavilion.

• Legacy and disparate systems (Axeda @aGlance, Honeywell, ABB)

• Common protocol devices (OPC, MODBUS, TCP/IP, PROFIBUS)

• IT Infrastructure (Windows Servers & Applications [via Perfmon], Switches & Routers [via SNMP], IP Devices [Ping & custom developed TCP/IP drivers], NT Services, etc)

• Standard Database and Office Applications using network, e-mail, and web technologies.

• Enterprise-wide system performance monitoring.

• Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) such as SAP R/3, Baan.

• Any real-time data exchange system where data can be sampled at specific intervals.

IDXSuite has been designed from inception using rigid object-oriented principles. IDXSuite takes advantage of extensive code re-use and functionality inheritance to produce compact, high performance modules. The code is based on a true 32-bit multi-threaded model and is available on Microsoft based Intel and Alpha platforms. IDXSuite is Windows 2000, 2003 and Windows XP “ready”!  IDXOnline is a Microsoft Certified Parter, Microsoft Embedded Partner and Microsoft ISV.  IDXSuite is Veritest certified for Windows 2000 and 2003

IDXSuite is designed around a modular, client-server architecture with a central database repository and one or more driver modules.
IDXSuite forms the core of the IDXSuite product suite. It is a generic real-time database tag server that maintains a ‘snapshot’ of current process values, timestamps and other attributes for a number of configured tags. The tags that it maintains and the frequency at which the data values for these tags are acquired and updated are user configurable both at design and run time (the IDXSuite node does not need to be stopped and restarted in order to change its configuration).

IDXSuite is tightly integrated with the Windows Server 2000 & 2003 operating systems:

As a Windows NT service, IDXSuite has no user interface and may be started during the Windows NT boot process. In this case it begins data acquisition and distribution even before a user logs on. Once the IDXSuite service and it’s associated modules have been loaded and are running, they continue to execute and transfer data until the service is stopped. The service may be started and stopped manually via the Control Panel / Services utility, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) or under user program control. Each IDXSuite service has a number of interfaces registered with DCOM, including a number of command interfaces that allows the user to interact with IDXSuite directly. This feature is typically used for configuration, simulation, diagnostics, and testing. Security within IDXSuite can be controlled on a per-user or per-workstation basis. IDXSuite is built using technology standards such as COM/DCOM and TCP/IP and has OPC and ADO/OLE-DB support built-in.

Each IDXSuite module encapsulates the communication protocols and transfer mechanisms of a specific type of data source or device. This frees IDXSuite from device specific implementation details.

The list of available modules is being continuously updated and IDXOnline should be contacted to check on the status of this list. The modular object-oriented architecture facilitates the rapid development of new driver modules - typically requiring a period of less than four weeks. An IDXSuite instance may be configured to have more than one IDXdm linked to it, thus providing a single consistent data server for a number of dissimilar devices and data sources.