Support for vendor data from DNP3

[BevanWeiss]

With more DNP3 device vendors supporting Device Attributes, but the limitation of the Device Attribute options starting to show itself, it would be nice if some of the other DNP3 object types were supported within Geo SCADA Expert.

Additional support for the g0v211 "user-specific attributes" would be useful in this situation.

This would allow a vendor to insert additional information within the g0v211 data sets in accordance with the registered namespace, and for this to be displayed in Geo SCADA Expert (in the same way that Device Attributes are displayed).

I believe the configuration for this would be three entries on the Outstation Properties tabs (alongside the Device Attributes option).

The entries would be:

1. An enable / disable tick box

2. An option to specify when the user-specific attributes should be retrieved (a. Only Manually, b. On connection, c. On Integrity Poll.. or such)

3. A list of namespaces to retrieve, as comma separated values in a string i.e. "ABC Corp, XYZ Inc"

[AndrewScott]

All of the standard DNP3 device attributes, including the additional attributes added in DNP3 TB2013-004 (since 6.80) are supported.

The user-specific DNP3 device attributes (g0v211) are already supported (and have been since ~2009). This is key requirement for supporting the DNP3-WITS standard, which defines its own namespace.

All user-specific device attributes are automatically read whenever the device attributes are read. They are shown in the outstation's view status dialog.

When enabled, device attributes are automatically read whenever Geo SCADA starts comms with an outstation. Since, 6.80 there is also an option to only read device attributes following a master or outstation restart which can be more efficient.

There is also a 'Read Device Attributes' method (on the outstation) to trigger the attributes to be read on-demand.

[BevanWeiss]

Thanks Andrew,

Is the Device Attribute request performed using a master request for g0 v254 qual=0?

Which then shows which user-specific attribute sets are advertised for a certain device.

Does it then enumerate through g0 v254 qual=xx for each user-specific attribute set index advertised?

Given the requirement to register an attribute-set with the DNP3 committee.. this may not be the best mechanism for the vendor to expose custom device attribute data via DNP3.  I'm open to other ideas on this.

The issue is becoming that certain vendors that we work with are starting to present this data in ways that make it 'awkward' to handle reliably and securely within Geo SCADA Expert (i.e. exposing it as a INF format file, hence suggesting the use of DNP3 File Transfer to retrieve and then parse for information).

[AndrewScott]

Is the Device Attribute request performed using a master request for g0 v254 qual=0?

Which then shows which user-specific attribute sets are advertised for a certain device.

Does it then enumerate through g0 v254 qual=xx for each user-specific attribute set index advertised?

Yes, this is defined by the DNP3 standard.

I don't think the 'requirement' to register namespaces with the DNP3 committee is very important as long as the chosen name is unique, e.g. it includes the vendor's name. Most vendors haven't bothered registering their namespaces:

https://www.dnp.org/Resources/DNP-Namespaces 

Non-standard solutions using proprietary file formats are never going to deliver interoperability. Geo SCADA could read the file and save it to disk but that's all without developing a custom DNP3 driver extension that can parse the custom file format and store the resulting attributes.

[sbeadle]

Thank you.