Role of relational data base management system and client/server technology in EMS migration

The databases and the data presentation software utilized by the control center computers (EMS) have always been highly specialized for the reason of the speed that is needed to process and present the data. This specialized database requires delicate handling, and is labor intensive to maintain. Because of the EMS growing out of this specialized process control industry, the database intensive applications such as Interchange Scheduling and Energy Accounting (IS/EA) have also been developed using these specialized databases. In an attempt to minimize software maintenance costs and provide a decision support environment at the end user's workstation, the EMS group at Salt River project has successfully migrated the existing EMS IS/EA application to a relational database management system (RDBMS) in a client/server architecture. This paper describes the RDBMS product selection criterion, various design and implementation considerations one has to make to achieve this migration. This new technology has provided a fast prototyping and applications development environment enabling the end user involvement to be an integral part of the development cycle. This migration of an EMS application to an RS6000 AIX platform has opened doors for migrating other applications and developing new applications to extend the life of the current EMS some of which are discussed in the paper.<
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