Communication architecture for a time-sharing process control system allows more efficient use of system capacity by use of HTTP servers to process HTTP requests when the system is not occupied with real time process control

摘要

A time-shared communications architecture for communicating digitized information for an industrial process control system, which architecture includes various programmed operating units (8, 10, 11) in particular site units (8) situated at a process interface level, which units process and store information which can be accessed by at least one other unit internal to the system or by an external computer, via at least one industrial local area network of said communications architecture. At least some of the units contain servers (9) of the HTTP type so as to be capable of sending optionally interactive computer documents in response to requests received from another unit of the system or from a computer, in particular external to the system, equipped with an HTTP/TCP/IP protocol stack and acting as a customer, without disturbing the priority and deterministic interchange related to the real time control of the process.