REMOTELY MONITORING / DIAGNOSING DISTRIBUTED COMPONENTS OF A SUPERVISORY PROCESS CONTROL AND MANUFACTURING INFORMATION APPLICATION FROM A CENTRAL LOCATION

摘要

A centralized diagnostics tool is disclosed that facilitates centralized monitoring of distributed components of a supervisory process control and manufacturing information application. The centralized diagnostics management console shell that is customized according to a set of software modules and application objects 105 that interface data sources to populate views via a view eng 130 supported by the console shell with a configuration database 124 and global name table 125. The console shell includes a set of view templates including controls for manipulating graphically displayed representations of data rendered by the distributed components such as PLC1 112. The console shell also includes an interface for exchanging requests and data with an extensible set of software modules that provide data links to ones of the set of distributed components. The software modules also define the customizable portions of the view rendered by the console shell and application objects 105.