[foxboro] Foxray or Integrity?

Valued List Members,
        I tried to post this on Friday morning but it got held up due to 
excessive size.  Dave Johnson once called me a "Prolific Keyboard Pounder, 
(PKP), and Duc says I "Talk too Much", (TTM), and I accept those acronyms as my 
lot in life.  I hope the reason this didn't make it was because I forgot to 
trim the email, as Duc has repeatedly warned us to do.  Here is my 2nd attempt.
 
The difference between Foxray and Integrity that Alex highlighted last week is 
very important to think about, especially in light of the transition from Unix 
to Windows that Foxboro IA users have already had to consider and adjust to.  
The next step is already well defined and marching forward.  The effort and 
development WILL be IEE.  So let's take a stroll down memory lane.

Originally, this mail list was comprised of a group of users that had
optimized their Fox IA systems based on scripting tools that heavily
utilized Foxboro provided tools, api's, and interfaces to produce the
kind of information they needed to optimize and maintain the control system at 
the plant level.

Fox IA's move to Windows was a hybrid, Windows with a nutcracker "Unix" shell 
environment that allowed Foxboro to have a Windows offering without having to 
move all of their applications to Windows native apps.  In that move, a lot of 
the functionality for remote access and applications was lost as well as 
breaking a lot of the UNIX shell script functions that users had optimized 
their systems on.  There was assurances from Foxboro that Unix, and even 
Solaris on the MESH would continue to be available.  We can now all see how 
that is going to work out.  Now the list is split about half and half with Unix 
and Windows users, and most of us are still bemoaning the fact that the system 
is moving back to a more closed system, much like the Video-Spec/MicroSpec 
system of old where you had to get 3rd parties to extract data from the system 
in order to be able to document the software applications and graphics embedded 
in the system.

If Foxboro planned to stay with Window 8.x and keep the remaining utilities, 
then Foxray would be a viable long-term alternative, because the hooks Foxray 
and other packages use to pull data from the Fox IA system are still mostly 
intact.

But we can all see that the long term direction for Invensys control
systems is IEE which utilizes Wonderware's InSQL database as the repository for 
all configuration and process data.  This, again, is a proprietary database 
with the configuration embedded in a way that users can't USE it. It isn't 
really a secret and Alex can correct me if I am wrong.  What he did say is:

"1) IPS and PAS work to ensure that Integrity product works properly
with the I/A Series system and supports our product direction, e.g.,
documenting configurations maintained by the IEE."

"2) Integrity can document much more than just the I/A Series system.
Since most clients have systems from multiple vendors, one tool to
document them all seems like a good feature to me."

 My interpretation of that is that IEE will continue to have a
closed/proprietary/Wonderware database and only PAS will get the hooks into 
that for their Integrity offering.  Foxray, and all of the other vendors would 
have to buy/use Integrity to get the same functionality they enjoy today in a 
more open environment.  

These are commercial decisions that have been made by Invensys, and I for one, 
think that closing the doors on older users that currently have open access to 
their systems, will continue to generate similar discussions on this list about 
other DCS vendors, and some exodus to systems that have more open access.   
Again, this is one man's opinion and observations based on the history I have 
lived.  I was excited when I first heard that IEE would be using a SQL database 
because I could imagine the possibilities.  When I learned that the database 
structure would not be provided or queriable, my excitement turned to dismay 
and disappointment as I realized why this direction was taken.

I remember Alex asking a lot of questions a few years ago about what the users 
would like to see in IEE, as a replacement for the tools and scripts currently 
provided in Fox IA.  He was referring to tools we employed to optimize, 
maintain, and document our systems.  Now we know the answer.  It is a 3rd party 
package named Integrity.  I haven't had a chance to look at Integrity yet, but 
I am disappointed that it will not be part of the standard offering direct from 
the control system vendor when buying a system, but likely an expensive add-on 
that most of us will have a hard time justifying to our management for approval.

Does Integrity provide the same ability provided in Foxray, to automatically 
back-document the control database in a graphical, relational SQL database, 
(something IACC can't do), but I'm told Foxray does?

What is the cost comparison?  i.e. What does a site license for Foxray cost as 
compared to a site license for Integrity?

Regards,
Tom VandeWater
Control Conversions, Inc.
Kapolei, HI


 
 
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