Schneider-Electric: StruxureWare SCADA Expert ClearSCADA – SCADA software for telemetry and remote SCADA applications

November 22, 2018

Integrated scalable SCADA Software optimised for managing remote assets spread across geographically dispersed infrastructure with secure and reliable capabilities and easy connectivity to business and IT systems.

Server general information

The ClearSCADA server performs all of the SCADA functions with exception of operator interface, and runs as a windows service under the operating system.

The ClearSCADA server is integrated with all the major components of software needed for a typical SCADA system. This not only saves you additional licensing costs but also simplifies the configuration effort and reduces the time to deploy. The diagram below highlights the internal components of the ClearSCADA server (shown within the box outline). In the centre is the real-time database which is updated by the Data collectors or protocol drivers.You will notice there is a broad offering of IO servers from AES for Oil & Gas flow computers and RTUs and native drivers for industry standard protocols such as MODBUS, DNP3, IEC870, and OPC etc.The Network and Server performance includes an SNMP and ICMP driver which is ideal for network devices such as data radios, network switches/routers, UPS etc. and the Performance Monitor driver is like the he Task Manager in Windows which can in monitor in real-time, trend and alarm any variable in the operating system on the server PC.

The real-time database resides in memory on the server and includes a rich set of metadata such as time-stamp, quality flag, alarm state etc., when communications is lost to the PLC/RTU the quality flag for the associated data points will change to “Last known value” and the point value is retained; the operator still has an idea of what is going on in the process.This is the true indication of a product designed for SCADA. 

The alarm and historian subsystem are attributes of the point object in the configuration environment and are no more work to configure than a simple check box. The historian is an integrated component to the ClearSCADA server. Every SCADA point can be historised if required. The historian is proprietary format for performance reasons however accessible using standard interface such as OPC-HDA, ODBC, and OLE-DB. It is event based with data compression options to tune data granularity. ClearSCADA also includes an archive object where you can take a snapshot of the historical data and copy to external drive or SAN.

In summary, the major components that are integrated into the ClearSCADA server include;

• Real-time database with point attributes such as time-stamp and quality flag
• Built-in protocol drivers for all PLC, Gas flow computes and RTUs
• An integrated event-based historian with compression options
• An alarm and event journal that is SQL compliant
• Alarm redirector to push critical alarms to email and/or text messages
• An integrated web server without need to convert graphics displays
• Crystal Report license free run-time engine and scheduler
• Open industry standard interfaces such as OPC, ODBC, .NET for integration with business systems