A method for controlling real world objects in an industrial installation, which is performed in a server node and includes the steps of: receiving a connection establishment request having a user identity; authenticating the user identity; establishing a connection; receiving a service request, wherein the service request includes a reference to an aspect object and a reference to an aspect of the aspect object; forwarding the service request and the user identity to a service dispatcher module; determining a target service provider from the reference to the aspect object by querying a directory server module; and sending the service request and the user identity to the target service provider.

Approaches are provided where a group of historical data relating to the operation of an industrial asset are collected on a time interval. It is determined whether the collected group of historical data corresponds to a transitory period of the industrial asset. When the collected group of historical data corresponds to the transitory period a full set of sensor values is read and made available to an analytics engine. When the collected group of historical data does not correspond to the transitory period, a minimal subset of sensor values necessary to detect a start or an end of the transitory period is read and stored.

An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) allows project topologies to be defined using an industrial domain-specific language (DSL) script. DSL scripting language can be used to define a control system topology in terms of the devices that make up the control system as well as the data connections between those devices. The IDE system can translate resulting topology to a project tree that serves as the basis for a control system project.