ClearSCADA 2007 R0 Release Notes

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Major Features

RealFLO EFM for the SCADAPack Modbus driver

• RealFLO flow run object added to support RealFLO SCADAPack Controllers.

• Supports RealFLO username and password security system.

• Supports scheduled collection of flow computer records: current readings, and hourly, daily, event, alarm and configuration data.

• Flow run data can be mapped to analog historical points in the ClearSCADA historical database.

• Supports a method to allow demand polling of historical records.

• Supports time synchronization, orifice plate change method, and gas analysis change method.

Localization support.

ClearSCADA has been modified to support multiple languages in two distinct areas:

• The product itself has been localized with support for the following languages: English (US), English (UK), English (Australia), Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Dutch and Norwegian. Dialogs, menus, alarm lists etc will be displayed using local languages.

• User defined strings. Engineers can create custom lists of translated strings for use on mimics, object properties, lists, alarm redirections etc. As different users log into the system, their user locale determines the language of the strings to be displayed.

IEC60870-5 Driver.

A new driver for IEC60870-5 communications has been added providing support for directly connected asynchronous serial connections such as radio or leased line using the 101 companion standard or over a TCP/IP network using the 104 companion standard. The 101 implementation allows both balanced communications for point to point serial links and unbalanced communications where a single master talks to multiple slaves through one serial link. |

The following data types can be transferred.

• 1 and 2 bit digital value

• 16 and 32 bit integer values

• 32 bit floating point

• 32 bit counters

• Binary files

Value change events are time tagged with millisecond resolution. The driver implements both master and slave emulations.

Siemens S7 Driver.

A new driver for Siemens S7 communications has been added providing support for ISO over TCP/IP (single and dual Ethernet), MPI via serial adapter and PPP via Serial Adapter. This driver supports the S7-200, 300 and 400 models of PLC.

Performance improvements.

Numerous improvements have been made to improve the responsiveness of the system and provide more transparency into what the system is currently doing.

• Improved speed of alarm list initialization and multiple alarm acknowledgements over slow or high latency links by batching multiple server requests into one request.

• Improved performance of transfer of historic records on main and standby servers.

• Implemented an adaptive historic flushing algorithm to reduce memory overhead by flushing data to disk at a higher rate when more historic data is being received.

• Added a mechanism for optimizing historic data files, by removing duplicated and deleted records, and by re-sorting into time order.

• Modified server startup procedure so that database load and initialization is done asynchronously, allowing the startup to be aborted if desired.

• Improved the way that mimics and embedded mimics are retrieved to reduce the number of messages between client and server. This will provide an improved load time for mimics on high latency links.

• Reduced historian startup time by more than 50%.

• Reduced the in-memory footprint of historic control structures to allow up to 10,000,000 historic files on 32 bit architectures.

• Added options to define how often and how many historic files to flush to disk in a single write operation.

• Added new option to only synchronize the standby servers based on the writeable historic life. This reduces the need to resynchronize the entire historic database after a short shut down.

Query Processor Improvements.

Significant improvements to the query processor have been made in this release to allow access to larger query result sets, higher levels of historic data density and the removal of memory restrictions on database queries.

• Improved performance of returning data from points with high historic data density.

• Added new SQL functions ELEMENT, MOD, TIMESTAMPADD and TIMESTAMPDIFF.

• Implemented the TOP statement in the query processor to specify either the number of rows returned in a query or a percentage of records to be returned.

• Added the TOP statement to event and historic queries to limit the number of rows returned.

• Removed the cache size limit for historic queries and searches so that queries will complete (unless they time out) even if large amounts of historic data must be searched.

• Added timeout and maximum CPU utilization fields for historic searches and query processor to limit the load on the server while performing large queries and allow the server to continue to be responsive during the execution of large queries or historic searches such as OPC HDA calls.

Scheduler Improvements

• Added a new calendar database object to allow schedules to be created based on days of the week and time of day including support for special days such as public holidays.

• Added support for a simple schedule to allow methods to be run on a regular schedule such as hourly, daily etc.

• Added support for expressions in schedule action arguments allowing the arguments of the action to be run to change depending on some other database value.

• Added option to specify which time zone the schedule operates in including support for UTC, Local time or Local Time with Daylight Savings.

• Modified the schedule editor to allow times to be edited in the Schedule Times dialog. This allows times with resolution less than 5 minutes to be configured for monthly and yearly schedules.

Other New Feature

• No Change Alarms. Added option to all points (except digital and derived points) to optionally raise an alarm when the points value does not change by a specified minimum amount for a specified period of time. This includes support for both polled and report-by-exception protocols.

• Context sensitive help. The online help is now linked in to the product using context sensitive help (F1). This will provide simple access through all stages of development and use of the product.  This also includes new Automation Interface and SQL reference manuals.

• X-Y Plots. Added a new object type to allow process variables to be plotted against each other rather than against time.

• Added a facility to allow the ClearSCADA server to emulate an older version. This would be used during the upgrade process to ensure uninterrupted client access to servers.

Minor Features

Status Monitoring Improvements

• Added a scheduled system snapshot file to record key server status details to a dedicated snapshot log file.

• Improved server startup and shutdown to include a progress indication in the server status client.

• Modified the crash logging mechanism to record minidump files entirely generated by ClearSCADA rather than Dr Watson. This allows better diagnostic information if system problems occur.

• Modified the server status dialog to be a separate application allowing connection to multiple registered ClearSCADA systems. The new application utilizes a tree control for improved visibility of data.

Alarm handling enhancements

• Added ability to specify an alternative alarm source name to be used in preference to the objects full name in alarm lists.

• Added a 'Reprioritize Alarms' method on alarmable objects and groups to allow the alarm severities to be increased or decreased by a configurable amount.

• Extended alarm acknowledgement with comment to allow a standard comment to be selected from a combo box, which can then be subsequently edited if required.

• Added a new property to database groups to return the last time an alarm within the group was updated.

• Added ability to perform manual alarm redirections from the alarm banner or list to allow a user to force the alarm redirection to occur. Manual redirections are logged against the user performing the redirection, or as System for automatic redirections.

• Added an option to users (including guest users) to control the availability of alarm operations on database groups (acknowledge, remove, disable and enable).

• Added a new table (CAlarm) to the Query Processor to allow alarm information to be queried in a similar manner to database aggregates e.g. SELECT O.FullName, A.StateDesc FROM CAlarmObject AS O JOIN CAlarm AS A USING (Id).

• Added support for accessing the fields & methods of an object's alarm conditions. These new groups can be found in the OPC browser and contain all alarm related state information for that object.

• Added support for acknowledging an alarm via OPC DA. The new alarm condition fields contain a property named Accept which returns the state of the alarm acknowlegdement for that point. When 0, the alarm is unacknowledged and when 1 is acknowledged. Writing a value to this field will change the acknowledgement state.

Alarm redirection enhancements

• Added the option to alarm redirection actions to allow them to be taken out of service. This will stop any pending or new redirections from occurring.

• Added optional acceptance keyword to email alarm acceptance that the user must enter in the subject line of the reply to accept the alarm.

• Added support for SMTP authentication for alarm redirection emails to allow connection to email servers requiring authentication to send emails. The authentication schemes CRAM-MD5, LOGIN and PLAIN are supported.

• Added a new trip sequence to alarm redirection to allow access to fields on the alarm redirection action itself.

DNP3 Driver Enhancements

• Added RS422 and RS485 options to the DNP3 eNET Port 3 configuration options as they are now valid options for the new 586 processor variant of the eNET.

• Added shared outstation support to the DNP3 driver to allow load sharing of communications between multiple channels.

• Split the alarm/event configuration in ClearSCADA into separate configuration fields for ClearSCADA alarms/events and buffered/triggered/none event configuration in the eNET RTU.

• Added a confirm message to configuration download for the eNET RTU to warn about the potential reset of the outstation during the download.

• Added support for data sets to allow reading outstation defined data set descriptors and prototypes and writing master defined data set descriptors and data types.

• Improved visibility of controls for fields in the eNET ports section to grey out fields when they are not required.

• Added new alarm to indicate the failure of the Disable Unsolicited Messages request to DNP3 outstations.

• The DNP3 eNET driver will now upload the configuration log file (config.log) after a download even if the restart config command returns an error. This will allow the engineer to determine the cause of the failed configuration.

• Added feature to prevent DNP3 master driver from retrieving class events that the slave has indicated are available until the next scheduled poll interval. This can help to reduce the number of small messages sent and received which may be a problem on high latency networks.

• Added support into the DNP3 driver to poll for DNP3 Device Attributes and store the information in the database. An option has been added to poll for attributes on communications startup or when requested manually.

• Standard DNP3 attributes have been exposed as fields in the database and via the View dialog.

• Added support for the revised DNP3 file transfer routines in both the DNP3 master and slave drivers.

• Added support for DNP3 output events as defined in protocol Technical Bulletin TB2005-001.

• Extended the DNP3 driver to support reading of string values from a slave at configured intervals.

• Added local time support (without daylight savings).

• Added an option to DNP3 outstations to control whether integrity polls are sent during a PSTN call if there is nothing else to do.

• Added option to update DNP3 counter value (including eNET) after a successful initialize action.

Security Enhancements

• Failed user logons are now recorded in the event journal and include the IP address from which the failed attempt was made.

• Added ability to select the permission required to write to custom data fields.

• Added ability to select the permission required to execute a user method.

• Added an 'Account Enabled' property to allow user accounts to be disabled.

• Added an 'Allowed Failed Logons' setting that, when exceeded, causes the account to be disabled.

• Added a 'Minimum Password Strength' setting to control whether passwords must contain certain combinations of character types eg. Upper case, digits etc.

• Added a 'Minimum Username Length' setting to force minimum lengths of user account names.

• Improved the security configuration to allow preset combinations of security settings to be configured - Weak, Medium, Strong or Custom.

• Allow a Super User account to be created on installation that provides full local Administrator access to the system. This functionality can be disabled if required.

• Super User account logon and logoff events are recorded in the event journal.

WebX Client Enhancements

• Added an option to specify the default sort order for the alarm list on the WebX client.

• Added an option to configure the background color of alarm lists in the web client.

• Added a menu option to lists in the WebX client to copy the displayed list to the Windows clipboard.

• Implemented 'Back' and 'Next' ViewX command pick actions in the WebX client.

• Added support for changing an expired password when logging on in the WebX client.

• Ensured WebX client will work successfully through a proxy server.

• Added support for 'Display Home Page' ViewX Command pick action in WebX client.

• Added support for downloading different versions of the WebX client control, to allow a client to connect to servers running different versions of ClearSCADA.

Advanced Driver Improvements (protocols such as DNP3, SCADAPack Modbus and Kingfisher)

• Added support for manually switching between the direct and PSTN Fallback channel.

• Added new fields for PSTN outstations to track times for the last successful and failed incoming and outgoing calls.

• An alarm is now generated if the control of a restore output fails.

• Added a new field to store the time of the last successful outstation poll.

• Added fields to store the number of successful polls for the current and previous communications statistics periods.

• Added a new field to store the time of the last unsolicited (or Report-by-Exception) message received.

Mimic Configuration Improvements

• Implemented the option to specify a default mimic view that is automatically displayed when the mimic is opened.

• Implemented indirect tags in ViewX expressions to allow the objects referenced to vary based on some other process variable.

• Added a slider control to mimic forms.

• Implemented an on screen numeric keypad that can be used to enter values for method arguments.

• Added support for pre-filtering an embedded alarm list on a mimic.

• Added a 'Locate in Navigator' option for embedded mimics, trends and x-y plots to allow embedded objects to be located in the navigator.

• Added support for importing SVG files into ViewX.  As SVG is a huge standard containing many features not required in SCADA images, import has been optimized for importing images from Adobe Illustrator.

• The title, X axis, Y axis and key visibility configuration options are now configured on the property sheet of the embedded trend object itself rather than on the parent trend.

• Added username function to ViewX expressions to allow the currently logged on user to be displayed on a mimic.

• Extended the mimic object dynamic size options to allow independent vertical and horizontal sizing to be configured.

• Improved EMF metafile import and added the option to import an EMF directly from a file.

• Added support for configuring an animation to control the visibility of individual items in a pick menu.

• Implemented a query control on script forms that displays the results of a query on the ClearSCADA database in a list control.

• Added LogOnUser and LogOffUser methods to the Application object in mimic scripts, to log on/off a specific system with a specific user.

Trend Enhancements

• When creating a new trace on a trend, traces are now automatically attached to the first available axis with matching range. If the existing axes are not appropriate, a new axis will be created to which the new trace is connected.

• Modified trends to display the wait cursor during initialization and to draw each trace after its initial data has been read rather than waiting for all traces to be read from the server.

• Added the option to configure the line width on traces.

Templates Enhancements

• Added support for creating local objects in template instances in addition to those defined in the template. Objects configured through the template are indicated by a brown arrow over the top of the object icon in the instance.

• Added an option to allow security configured on templates to be propagated to the instances. For complex security configuration, this can reduce time required to configure security within the instances.

• Added an option to allow the color palette settings to be propagated from the template to the instances.

Other Minor Enhancements

• Added a 'Normal (Background)' entry to the color palette to allow the background color of objects on mimics and lists to be configured from the previous default of white.

• Implemented Area of Interest (AOI) functionality. The AOI allows alarms in the system to be filtered by the AOI as well as using existing features such as severity and database location.  Users can be restricted to specific Areas of Interest to reduce their access to system alarms.

• Added option to create hidden systems. If the 'Visible In ViewX' option in the ClearSCADA Connections applet is not ticked, the system will not be listed in ViewX, Server Status or Server Config, but will be available for third-party Automation, ODBC and OPC applications.

• Added support for custom (SDK or Software Development Kit) drivers written in .NET 2.0 compliant languages.  Contact Control Microsystems for further information.

• Added a Reset Query menu option to lists to reset the query to its initial state after it has been modified using the Filter or Sort dialogs.

• Added methods to CDBObject database class to allow addition, modification and removal of entries from the event journal.

• Added logic function ELEMENT that is used to split strings into required component parts.

• Added an execute method to Function Block Diagrams (FBD) and Ladder Logic programs.

• Added a feature to show the connected system name in document titles when connections to multiple systems are configured in ViewX.

• Implemented support for tracking Notes added to database objects through events in the event journal.

• Added properties to the historic database to provide the time that data was last written to the historic stream and the total number of historic updates.

• Implemented DISCO and WDSL files for ClearSCADA and OPC XML-DA web services, to allow discovery and code generation through tools such as Visual Studio 2005.

• Mismatches in database features that can be modified dynamically (such as security) no longer cause the standby database in a main-standby arrangement to become invalid. These features are now automatically synchronized from the main to the standby.

• Serial port baud rates can now be set to any value, not just the standard values displayed in the configuration forms drop down lists.

• Added option to change the font in the View dialog.

• Added the option to user accounts to only allow them to control objects when the object is under their exclusive control. Added an option to objects to exclude them from this requirement.

• Added a future life parameter to allow future data from outstations to be stored in the historian.

• Extended the Port Server to allow multiple direct channels to share the same serial port (using 'Remote Serial' connection type). This allows two or more channels (from different drivers) to share the same serial port. This supports DNP3, Modbus RTU (including SCADAPack Modbus extensions), Modbus ASCII and IEC 60870 protocols.

• Added an option to Crystal Reports to specify the location of the data source. This allows the report to use the DSN configured on the servers (most common), or the DSN(s) configured in the report itself. This option would most often be used when the report connected to multiple databases (or ClearSCADA servers) for a single report.

• Added support for parameters to hyperlinks to Crystal Reports to select the latest report or a report at a specific date and time.

• Implemented file and serial port writing from logic.

• Added a new driver to perform ICMP (ping) polls. This driver uses a digital point to return a 1 or 0 depending on the status of the ping of a specified IP address.

• Added helper dialogs for configuring intervals/offsets on forms in ViewX.

• Improved ViewX multi-head support for when multiple instances of ViewX run on the same machine.

• Extended data grids to allow rows in data grid tables to be updated, inserted and deleted using SQL (for literal values only).

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