Introduction

This document is a description of the "open source" project called "OpenSCADA". OpenSCADA is a SCADA system built on the principles of modularity, scalability and multiple OS/Hardware integration.

As a policy the development of the system utilized "open source" principles. This choice allowed for the creation of a reliable and publicly available SCADA system. At the same time bringing together a significant number of product developers, enthusiasts and other stake holders to develop, test, and disseminate the project, thus minimizing the financial and distribution costs.

OpenSCADA is designed for the collection and archiving of system data plus the visualization and controlling of process operations typical of SCADA systems. Due to the level of scalability and modularization the system can be used in a variety of applications.

OpenSCADA can be used:

• at industrial facilities as a full featured SCADA system;
• in embedded devices, as an execution environment, including within a PLC (programmable logic controller);
• to build technological, chemical, physical or electrical processes models;
• at data centers or other server facilities to collect, process, present and archive data regarding the PCs, servers and clusters and their network and environment.

The host operating system selected for development was Linux has it optimized the solutions of the following issues:

• reliability — a large proportion of servers and clusters running on GNU/Linux OS;
• flexibility/scalability — due to its openness and modularity Linux allows the designer to create solutions to fix any requirements
• availability — due to being GPL the software is provided at no cost (novice users may require some kind of paid support package however skilled user would not require this level of support);
• popularity and support — Linux is in active development by many enthusiasts, businesses and government agencies throughout the world, and is gaining wide spread support on the personal and the corporate marketplace, plus it is being promoted in the state structures of various countries.

While the system currently operates only on the Linux OS the project is being developed so that it can be installed on different operating systems. This ability to port to other OS will be added in future revisions.

At the heart of the system is a modular kernel, and depending on what modules are installed the system can configured to operate on a variety of networked servers and clients and in this way allow for the implementation of a client-server architecture saving machine memory, disk space, and programming time. However it is possible to configure the OpenSCADA on a single stand alone PC with the user choosing which modules to install, data acquisition, simple client, or both the client and server.

Differing server configuration can be designed for collecting data, processing data, issuing commands, archiving and logging information, and providing this information to clients (UI, GUI, TUI ...). The modular architecture allows for modification of a module’s functionality without the requirement of restarting the whole system.

Flexible system configuration allows the user to build solutions to meet specific requirements of reliability, functionality and complexity. Custom configurations can be based on different graphics libraries (GUI/TUI ToolKits), using the core program and selecting various modules (by adding it to the UI-user interface module), or the system can be used in a standalone application connecting the core of OpenSCADA to its libraries.