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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 mutliple OS 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 commercially available SCADA software packages. 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.

The heart of the system is a modular kernel. And depending on what modules are installed, the system can created from a variety of different servers, as well as of clients, and to combine these functions into one program. This allows you to implement a client-server architecture SCADA system based on the same components / modules, saving machine memory, disk space, as well as valuable programming time.

Server configuration of the system are designed for collecting, processing, issuing commands, archiving, logging information from various sources, and providing this information to clients (UI, GUI, TUI ...). The modular architecture allows for modification of a module’s functionality without restarting the 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 to add to the user interface, or the system can be used in a standalone application connecting the core of OpenSCADA to its libraries.