Ease of implementation - how important is it ?

Gary Law's picture
Submitted by Gary Law on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 13:20.

Manufacturers spend a lot of time trying ot make their systems easier to implenent with graphical tools. However on large projects most of the implementation is via data import / database driven tools.
which area should have more focus - interactive tools (graphical) or data base / data manipulation tools ?

‹ Vector Graphics/CAD Historically correct graphics ›

I think both should be

aaroncrews's picture
Submitted by aaroncrews on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 14:40.

I think both should be addressed. I understand why the graphical tools have seen the most polish - it's the people buying the system who are going to be using them the most.

What I would like is for it to be easier to get data in and out in a bulk manner. The need for custom formats for import and export files and the effort required to customize each individual format should be minimized. I'm sure plant engineers would love to be able to easily get an export from the system in their portable format of choice, too - it'd make alarm rationalization, instrument index reconciliation, and configuration audits a breeze.

It'd be nice if you could use an ODBC driver or something to tie your configuration straight into a database for the initial bulk configuration work, but as long as it's made as easy as possible to get back and forth from a .csv or tab delimited file then I'm ok.