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Reducing time to load device description in management of field devicesRelated Patent Categories: Electrical Computers And Digital Processing Systems: Memory, Storage Accessing And ControlReducing time to load device description in management of field devices description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20060206659, Reducing time to load device description in management of field devices. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention generally relates to process control systems, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for reducing time to load device description in management of field devices in process control plants. [0003] 2. Related Art [0004] A process control plant generally contains several field devices, which are operable to implement a desired control process (e.g., oil refinery, manufacturing operation, etc.). Examples of field devices include valves, positioners and switches, which are controlled to implement the control process. [0005] There is a general need to manage field devices provided in a process control plant. Management generally refers to tasks such as monitoring and configuration of the devices, and generally entails communication to field devices, viewing various status/configuration information related to the field devices etc. [0006] The status information could provided data related to aspects such as temperature, pressure, extent of opening of a valve, light intensity, whether the device is malfunctioning (e.g., output saturated, input open), configuration values, calibration status, etc., of the field devices. On the other hand, configuration generally causes some parameters in the devices to be set, which in turn may cause the configured device to operate differently consistent with the changed configuration. [0007] A user interface is generally provided to facilitate the management of field devices in process control plants. The user interface provides a convenient interface using which a user can interface with the system and perform desired management tasks. Often, the user interface is based on graphical screens for ease of use, and is in such instances referred to as a graphical user interface (GUI). [0008] Device description (DD) is often provided by a vendor associated with a field device, with the device description indicating the manner in which the status information (or results of execution of the management commands) can be viewed and management commands can be sent (communication to field device). The device description is often provided as a content of a file, which is referred to as a device description (DD) file. [0009] Accordingly, at least in management of field devices consistent with the specification of the corresponding DD, the DD often needs to be loaded (typically, read into appropriate data structures supported in a random access memory) by a program providing various management features. At least to provide quick responses to users, the loading needs to occur quickly. [0010] What is therefore needed is a method and apparatus for reducing time to load device description in the management of field devices in process control plants. SUMMARY [0011] An aspect of the present invention reduces the time to load description in the management of field devices by pre-processing the device description to determine values corresponding to each attribute, and storing the values in an intermediate file provided on a secondary storage. Thus, the values can be quickly retrieved from the intermediate file and stored in a data structure in a memory, for the field devices of interest. [0012] In an embodiment, the data stored in the intermediate file contains only values corresponding to the attribute, and the values are stored in a specific order such that the values in said second file can be retrieved in that order and stored in a memory to load the device description. [0013] Further features and advantages of the invention, as well as the structure and operation of various embodiments of the invention, are described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0014] The present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, which are described briefly below. [0015] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example environment in which various aspects of the present invention can be implemented. [0016] FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating the manner in which device description (DD) is loaded in one prior embodiment. [0017] FIG. 3 contains the definition of a variable in a DD, which is used to illustrate various features of the present invention. [0018] FIG. 4A is a flowchart illustrating the manner in which the time to load device description is reduced in an embodiment of the present invention. [0019] FIG. 4B is a block diagram illustrating the manner in which the time to load device description is reduced in an embodiment of the present invention. [0020] FIG. 5 contains the object definition corresponding to the DD portion of FIG. 3. [0021] FIG. 6 illustrates the data stored for a DD portion in an embodiment of the present invention. Continue reading about Reducing time to load device description in management of field devices... 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