Development of distributed industrial control applications: the CORFU framework

Today's control applications are either based on traditional distributed control systems or on programmable logic controllers. They are usually composed of monolithic applications that are almost impossible to integrate and even to expand. Even more, the many different types of commercial fieldbuses resulted in a wide diversity of devices and tools to support the development of Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCSs). The demand for integration, both during the development phase as well as during the operational phase is becoming more than evident. In this paper, we present CORFU, an OO framework to improve the engineering process of JPMCSs in terms of reliability, development time and degree of automation. The defined framework embodies an abstract design that is capable to provide solutions for the family of distributed JPMCSs.