Messaging methods in a service-oriented architecture for industrial automation systems

In todaypsilas business landscape, manufacturing companies are facing a huge market pressure for reduced production time and costs. Available industrial automation systems are often based on proprietary communication protocols; therefore integration with the companypsilas enterprise information systems (EIS) is a tedious and costly procedure. As real-time visibility of devices in the organization is essential to optimize production processes, we compare and discuss two messaging methods in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for embedded devices, and contrast the advantages of the flexible event-based messaging mechanism offered by Web services (WS-Eventing) with the more reliable and scalable, but less interoperable Java messaging system (JMS). We finally propose several key factors that should be carefully evaluated when implementing a robust industrial messaging system.