Database management for industrial automation systems |

Database management for industrial automation systems

May 132014
Database management for industrial automation systems

By Nigel Rozier, Raima    

From simple batch processing to the most sophisticated real-time processes, effective data management is the key to boosting efficiency, increasing productivity and reducing costs in industrial applications. This article explores the role of data management solutions embedded within industrial automation systems.




These systems may well have been designed at a time when data management and dataflow solutions were still in their infancy. Because of this, alarms can often be delayed in their delivery to responders and many of them can be inaccurate or even false. This could result in frequent and unnecessary maintenance, costly production stoppage or, in rare cases, catastrophic failure.







When evaluating embedded databases, there are some key features to assess. The database technology should already be  implemented in numerous industrial automation systems, ranging from simple batch processing systems to complex turnkey power plant systems. Common across many of such systems is the requirement for live real-time data management performance at the controller (device) level, with automated data movement to upstream shop floor management systems and beyond to corporate management systems.

Embedded technologies should provide a rugged, scalable and local solution for the handling of large amounts of production-specific data, directly on the plant floor. Platform independence allow them to run on everything from popular OS options such as MS Windows, Linux and iOS to real time systems such as Wind Rivers’s VxWorks, QNX Neutrino and Green Hills INTEGRITY, as well as many others. As well as supporting multiple processor and multi-core architectures, the data storage engine should provide a set of data organisational features that can be use to control in-memory, disk-based or remote storage to provide the best possible performance in an embedded systems application.

Importantly, the technology should be able to make data available wherever it is needed. This is often achieved by replicating data between computers on a network and via the Internet to systems outside the embedded network environment. This can be used to improve the speed of processing, data backup security and system-wide data availability.

Simple set up is desirable because it increases the visibility of data, and so makes whole production processes more efficient. And if it is embedded within the industrial automation system itself, it eliminates a whole layer of costly PC installations and the associated development and support costs.

The conventional embedded database products that typically reside in higher level enterprise systems, often store data in a flat file. This can lead to slow, bulky data handling. As more and more industrial automation systems generate data, there are too many log files for a flat file system to cope with efficiently. Efficient systems not only collects the data in a more structured and meaningful way, but also allows pre-processing of the data actually on the embedded device itself before sending the most relevant data to other systems for further analysis or long-term historical data storage.

System developers working with industrial automation systems in all sectors can take full advantage of the advanced features of state of the art technologies, such as support for multi-core processors, in-memory limitation, encryption, shared memory and a host of other high-performance features. It is an ACID compliant database, meaning that the information collected is guaranteed to be accurate. Automatic recovery features ensure that data will never be lost due to a system failure. And often most critical of all is a very high level of availability needed to support modern industrial automation processes.



Nigel Rozier is a Chartered Engineer with a degree in physics and computer science. He began his career as an Embedded Software Developer at Ericsson. This experience led to working as a Field Application Engineer for Telelogic where alongside other duties he taught high level software languages before moving into a commercial role. Nigel was UK Sales Manager at Green Hills Software for nine years before joining Raima in 2010. He is now the EMEA  (Europe, Middle East and Asia) Sales Manager and responsible for some of Raima’s largest accounts.. Raima is a provider of high performance, always on database management system technology for both in-memory database usage and persistent storage devices. It delivers database solutions which are cross-platform, small footprint and  designed for distributed architecture in resource-constrained environments.

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