ClearSCADA 2009 R2 Release Notes

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New Features

Multi-Trace Ad-hoc Trends

ClearSCADA 2009 R2 provides a facility where trend displays can be configured "on the fly" to allow users in ViewX and WebX to create and modify trends as required. The definition of the trend display is specified using ClearSCADA's own specification language called TrendSpec which defines the appearance and data displayed on the trend. Trends created using the "TrendSpec" can be added to the user's Favorites list or to an existing Operator Document Store for later reference.

An example ad-hoc trend system has been created and included in the ClearSCADA Example projects available on the CD (see the Trends page in the Operate section of the Presentation).

Command Processor for SMS Pager Driver

ClearSCADA can be configured to send SMS messages to a user's Pager or mobile phone in response to events such as a point changing state or an alarm being raised in the database. The Pager Driver has been extended to support incoming SMS messages allowing the recipient of an SMS message from ClearSCADA to respond to the message received or to send commands to the ClearSCADA server at any time.

Some common uses:

• acknowledging alarms

• changing alarm setpoints

• requesting a status report

• triggering a report to be emailed to a Blackberry

• many more...

The facilities now available in this ClearSCADA release permit validated users to interact with the system, without needing to setup and connect into ClearSCADA using ViewX or WebX. Simple commands can be issued using a mobile phone anywhere and anytime.

SCADAPack E-Series Extensions

The existing SCADAPack E-Series driver has been extended to support:

• Control Microsystems SP330E/SP334E RTUs

• Trend data file recovery. The new trend objects in ClearSCADA interact with the sampler functionality in the SCADAPack E-Series RTUs, providing data logging and built-in statistical analysis of data monitored in the RTU. Data can be logged at a given sample frequency, and time based calculations such as minimum, maximum and average can be performed on the data as it is received in the RTU and seamlessly returned to ClearSCADA for historic logging.

Multi-site WebX

The Web client has been modified to support cross database links. WebX users can now navigate seamlessly between mimics on different ClearSCADA systems.

Eavesdrop Support for SCADAPack Modbus Driver

The SCADAPack Modbus driver now supports eavesdrop operation to allow ClearSCADA to operate in parallel to an existing SCADA system. This functionality is typically used during the commissioning of a new ClearSCADA system for a period of time so that the data being received in ClearSCADA can be compared against data received in the existing systems. During eavesdropping, ClearSCADA listens to the transmit and receive connections of the outgoing communications path and uses the communications it hears to populate the data in the ClearSCADA database.

Support for up to 5 Partner Servers

The Main-Standby functionality has been modified to support up to 5 partner servers from one main server. The possible architectures include

• Main-Standby with up to 4 permanent standby servers.

• Triple Standby with up to 3 permanent standby servers.

Support for Large Databases (500000 Objects)

ClearSCADA 2009 R2 has been enhanced to support databases of up to 500000 objects. As part of this change, the current database save mechanism has been modified to support incremental save. The principles of the new mechanism are:

• The configuration and data files are split into multiple files.

• The database configuration hierarchy is saved in a separate single file.

• Each configuration file contains the configuration for a fixed range of objects based on the Object Id.

• The object's data will also be stored in multiple data files.

Changes made in file structures are transparent to the user and will be performed automatically on system upgrade.

Mimic Expression for Checking User Security

A new CheckAccess method has been added to mimic expressions that allows an expression to determine if the logged on user has a particular permission. This allows expressions to be configured to control the behavior of certain mimic objects based on the user.

Some common examples of usages:

• Hiding a button when the user does not have configuration permissions

• Disabling a button's pick action when the user is not allowed to run the command

• Changing the hyperlink on a button based on the permission of the user on the target mimic eg. only display the configuration dialog if the user has config permissions.

Product Enhancements

• Support has been added for additional alarm routing opitons. This is an extension to the existing Alarm Management System whereby 1 user/workstation may be specified as responsible for alarms associated with an object allowing only that user/workstation to accept the alarm.

• Two additional fields have been added to all alarms, called "ResponsibleEntityType" and "ResponsibleEntity".

• A new alarm redirection action called "SetResponsibleEntity" has been added to set the "ResponsibleEntityType" and "ResponsibleEntity" fields of the associated alarm.

• A new OLE DB Driver has been added to the product that will allow external applications to connect to the ClearSCADA database using OLE DB.

• The alarm banner (not alarm list) has been extended such that a configuration engineer can define one or more additional alarm actions to appear in the alarm menu. The alarm banner context menus can be extended with additional entries, which run client side scripts.

• New Languages supported in ClearSCADA 2009 R2

• Turkish

• Italian

• French

• Implemented extra server methods to allow easier configuration of alarm redirection calendar actions:

• SetDayType - takes a date and a day type (0 is default, 1 to 7 is the index of the required day type).

• GetDayType - takes a date and returns the day type (0 is the default, 1 to 7 is the index of the selected day type).

• Purge - deletes any expired calendar date configuration

• Extended time profiles to support:

• Daily and weekly periods.

• Interpolated and stepped modes.

• Double, float, long and unsigned long data types.

• Configurable time and value resolution (i.e. grid) when editing vectors in ViewX.

• Configurable maximum number of vectors per day.

• Automation method to modify the vectors of a profile programmatically.

• List of profiles in the database.

• Cut, copy, paste and delete of vectors between different days of the week and between different profiles, including undo and redo.

• Added support to undo/redo import historic data generate curve.

• Removed the previous scan value logging in the OPC, OPCXMLDA and PLC drivers.

• Changes to Telnet Logging

• Telnet Logging is disabled by default.

• It can be enabled using the new registry setting LogEnableTelnet.

• Removed support for viewing system status information via DBServer Telnet Logging.

• A new 'IsGroup' property has been added to the DBObject class in .Net API that returns true if the object is of type CGroup.

• Modified ViewX to allow spaces in mimic parameter names.

• Added GetParameter function to Mimic script object to allow access to parameters that aren't identifiers.

• Added warning to parameter dialog when name contains spaces.

• Modified 'Locate In Template' function in ViewX database navigator so that it locates the object in the template of the top-level instance instead of the immediate instance parent.

• When the Crystal Reports driver is configured with a large thread pool, some of the threads were intermittently failing at start-up with a "The handle is invalid" error whilst trying to access the printing user's registry settings. An optional delay has been added to give time for Windows to finish loading the users registry hive (before accessing the registry).

The duration of the delay (in milliseconds) may be specified by creating 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Serck Controls\SCX6\Printing\StartupDelay' DWORD registry value.

Advanced Drivers

• DNP3 Driver

• Extended DNP3 translator to include all current control status descriptions.

• The currently enabled unsolicited event classes for DNP3 outstations are now exposed as data items in the database.

• Additional fields have been added to the CAdvSet object and the CAdvPSTN aggregate (used by CAdvOutstation) to provide additional information on the current state of a promoted dial out. These fields are updated initially when the request is received and then before each successive call attempt and are:

• RemainingPromotedCalls - The number of promoted dial out calls remaining

• NextPromotedCallTime - The time at which the next promoted dial out call will occur

• LastPromotedCallTime - The time at which the last promoted dial out call will occur and therefore the completion time of the promoted dial out period

• "Abort Pre-message Delay if CTS Raised" and "Post-message RTS Delay" fields have been removed from those drivers which do not support them (e.g. standard Modbus driver).

• General improvements to Advanced Driver Library which include:

• Allowing multi-drop communications to be "On Demand".

• Support for protocols that can create inbound network connections but require the driver to send an identification message.

• Allow outstations to make an Inbound to Connection to any channel (i.e. so that they can all use the same port number). The outstation and connection is then transferred to the correct channel.

• All redundant Start Comms requests, including those generated through the Fallback method, are discarded once the outstation has healthy multi-drop communications.

• Extended the Comtrol Device Master Freeport functionality in Advanced Drivers to work on 64-bit Operating Systems.

• Interoperability documents for the IEC-60870 driver have been incorporated into the install kit. After installation of ClearSCADA 2009 R2, these can be now found in the Control Microsystems folder in 'C:\Program Files' directory.

• The current algorithm for selecting the best available PSTN channel has been replaced with a new algorithm where each channel is allocated a quality that is incremented upon a good call and decremented upon a bad call, but pegged within the range 1 to 'n', where 'n' is configurable. To configure the Quality Factor, a new field has been added in "Server Configuration\Global Parameters\Channels". The channel with the highest quality is the best channel. When several channels have the same quality, a round-robin algorithm is applied to cycle amongst them. Each channel is initially allocated the highest quality 'n'

• TMX Driver

• Added support for the TMX 'control during comms' feature flag, which defines whether control programs execute during an ordinary comms session.

• Added support for reading and setting TMX timer variables during an online session.

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