Re: [Qscada-developers] R: Exciting news

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Jovan Kostovski wrote:

>>Those companies that do not get on board with Qscada will
>>have their "proprietary portocols" reverse engineerd so they will be
>>compatible without consent/control of their destiny.....

> We don't have to reverse engineer those protocols. If we do that we
> can not garantee that the protocol is working correctly.
> I think the best way is those proprietary protocols to be written by
> the companies themselves and to be given to us as compiled
> plugins that can be added to QScada.
> A concept similar to what NVidia is doing with the Linux drivers for
> their graphic cards.


Jovan,

WE agree again!  (this is quite scary for me)....


But, my question is what do you do when the "big boys"
Do not develop compatibility with Qscada? Reverse engineering
their proprietary portocols, even with a limited measure of success,
will motivate them. I'm sorry, but I do not see Rockwell, Siemens,
etc etc jumping on the Qscada bandwagon, as most have purchased
part or all of companies that have their own SCADA products.
Reverse engineering protocols provides that nudge some may need.
If not, potential users of Qscada, will have an alternative.

What I do is used proprietary protocols(when the customers insists)
between the PLC and a limited amount of equipment.  I then used
ModbusTCP to communicate with the SCADA server. If one designs a
controls network like that, migration from one Scada server to another
is very straightforward.

If the (legacy) Scada server to PLC communiations involve many
proprietary protocols, migration away from that (vendor's)Scada server
platform can be a lot of work, and preclude many from the effort. That
is why we'll need to suppport these legacy (proprietary) protocols
in QScada. If not this approach, then  tell me what is our plan to
attract (migrate) folks from their legacy scada setup to QScada?


If we do not have compatibility with the "big boys" on their proprietary
(plc) protocols, migration from other commercial SCADA offerings to
Qscada, may take a long time. Most protocols are "clear text" and
therefore straightforward to reverse engineer.... We do it all the time,
but, as you have elluded, maintaining such code, is time consuming....

thoughts?


James