An operator system for a process control system, wherein the operator system includes an operator server and at least one operator client connected to the operator server, where operators authenticate with respective login data via the at least one operator client or via a plurality of operator clients of the operator system on an authentication server and the authentication server generates, for each of the authenticated operators one operator-specific data record, in which an access or functional right to at least one operator server application is stored such that during the operating and monitoring of a process to be controlled, access or functional rights can be temporarily transferred from one of the operators to the other operator in a secure manner with respect to the security aspects, without which end changes would need to be made in an access and functional rights list via an engineering system.

An operator system for a process control system, wherein the operator system includes an operator server and at least one operator client connected to the operator server, where operators authenticate with respective login data via the at least one operator client or via a plurality of operator clients of the operator system on an authentication server and the authentication server generates, for each of the authenticated operators one operator-specific data record, in which an access or functional right to at least one operator server application is stored such that during the operating and monitoring of a process to be controlled, access or functional rights can be temporarily transferred from one of the operators to the other operator in a secure manner with respect to the security aspects, without which end changes would need to be made in an access and functional rights list via an engineering system.

Embodiments of the disclosure relate to real-time debugging systems and methods. In one embodiment, a system that includes a server module and a client module can be provided. The server module can be executable on a first computer and can be adapted to use a native communications format for interactive transfer of industrial automation data between the first computer and at least one industrial automation element. The client module, which can be executable on the same computer as the server module or on a different computer, can include a debugging application configured to use a universal communications format for communicatively interacting with the server module for accessing the industrial automation data and debugging one or more programming portions associated with the industrial automation data.

A cloud gateway for coupling an industrial system to a cloud platform is provided. The cloud gateway collects data from one or more industrial controllers, meters, sensors, or other devices comprising an industrial automation system. The cloud gateway optionally performs additional transformations on the data to add context, summarize, filter, reformat, and/or encrypt the data. The cloud gateway then sends data to a cloud platform for use by one or more cloud-based applications or services. The cloud gateway can facilitate cloud-based data collection from both fixed-location and mobile industrial systems. The cloud gateway can also support store-and-forward logic, allowing industrial data to be temporarily stored in local storage in the event that communication between the cloud gateway and the cloud platform is disrupted.

The present disclosure provides a server device in a supervisory control and data acquisition system, wherein the system includes multiples client devices and the server device, wherein the server device comprises: a communication module to communicate with the multiple client devices; and a data service module configured: when a first client device has registered a requirement for processing data, to allocate a task for processing the data based on the requirement; and/or when a second client device subscribes to the requirement, to control the communication module to publish the requirement to the second client device; to process the data using the task; and to control the communication module to send the processed data to the first and/or second devices.

This invention provides a method of cloud data services of industrial process automation systems. It can be used by clients such as a client application, a client system, or even end users (personnel). It is generic without a custom and lengthy configuration for any specific industrial process automation system of industrial processes. It automatically discovers the interested configuration information of an industrial process automation system, and provides configuration data, runtime data, alarm/event records, and historical data to clients. It allows clients to search for data items based on process orientated criteria. It tracks clients' search criteria, keeps client selected data items in data groups with multi-part namespace, which data groups can be shared among end users. It calculates the view-count of a data group and the popularity of a data item contained in data groups, which will help the sort of client query results. By opening a data group, client will be able to access the interested data from industrial process automation systems.

A cloud-based operator interface system is provided that runs as a cloud service on a cloud platform. The cloud-based operator interface system collects industrial data from one or more industrial systems via respective cloud gateway devices. A set of predefined operator interface screens are stored on cloud storage associated with the operator interface system, and delivered to authorized Internet-capable client devices upon request. The industrial data received from the cloud gateways can be delivered to the client devices from the cloud platform via the operator interface screens. Additional cloud-side services can correlate and analyzes the industrial data on the cloud platform to facilitate additional reporting, alarming, and notification features.

Methods and systems are described for improvements to the use of distributed computer networks. For example, conventional systems may rely on the distribution of network or application traffic across multiple servers and may maintain load balancers to maintain that distribution in an efficient manner. Each load balancer may sit between client devices and backend servers, receiving and then distributing incoming requests to any available server capable of fulfilling them. The load balancers may ensure that no one server is overworked based on the number of processing requests directed to that server, which could degrade performance.