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The PRMC Interface

Under construction! Please contribute to this interface definition!

Introduction and Motivation

The objective is to define an open flexible universal software and data interface between process modelling software and industrial (or laboratory) automation systems fullfilling the following demands:

The interface is simple enough to be understood and used by people with limited programming skills and small resources (i.e. it is not a 2^nd CAPE-OPEN).
The interface supports exchangeable process models.
The interface supports the collection and storage of process data independently from a specific process model.
The interface allows the programming of general purpose software tools (e.g. for sensitivity analysis or parameter fitting) independent of a specifc process.
The interface introduces a minimum of overheads and is compatible to UNIX and Windows IT environments.
The input-, output- and parameter-definitions for a specific process are freely accessible.

Process independent part

The interface definitions will be published here and they should be useable for all process models:

Headers and declarations for different programming languages (C,C++,FORTRAN,...).
Automatic source code generation of the process specific parts.
ASCII based data formats editable by EXCEL type tools (.csv).

What do you require/expect?

Process specific part

The process specific definitions are proposed to consist of only 3 files:

the static process parameters p_k definition (see Excel and ASCII/CSV templates).
the dynamic process inputs x_i(t) definition (see Excel and ASCII/CSV templates).
the dynamic process outputs y_j(t) definition (see Excel and ASCII/CSV templates).

For examples please refer to the individual processes (e.g. the EAF).

Remarks

The process model end user of a process model should have the free choice to use any of the general purpose interfaces provided here (in the future).
The primary interface programming language was choosen to be C (ISO/IEC 9899:1999) with the restriction to use only features not hindering the procurement of interfaces to other programming languages. It is therefore "call by reference".

By providing wrapper routines, the end-users and developers are free to use other programming languages. CLI/.GNU support may follow on demand.

The process model developer has to provide only one library routine (source, compiled, ...). This routine is called from the different user interfaces.