1. Web Visualization
Technology
Horner APG
Ver 1.0

2. Current Solutions
Remote visualisation of OCS data is currently best achieved in one of two ways using current Horner functionality:
EnvisionRV
The OCS Inbuilt Web Server
Both solutions have their drawbacks – EnvisionRV although giving good quality graphics and fast responses is limited to running on PC based platforms, whilst the inbuilt webserver has long been in need of a makeover to support updated file types, and provide a better interface for interacting with the live OCS data.

3. Data Push Utility
Horner has developed a web service utility typically designed to be run on a VPS system.
An external OCS can connect to the web service and update it’s current register values. These can be stored in CSV, XML and SQL formats.
The protocol used can be passed as http messages, and as such many firewall issues associated with passing data over the net are avoided.
There is also provision in the protocol for data to be transferred back to the OCS (i.e. written).

4. Visualising Data and Interacting with the OCS
We’ve recently created the Push Data application which allows one or more OCS devices to store data in a centralised SQL database, and now we have this functionality we need to provide the customer with the tools acting on the data acquired data to:
Analyse and present the data in a format suitable for them
Interact with the OCS to react to data received – Process Data, Alarms etc.
Customer needs are different in these regards so we need to provide flexible tools to analyse data and take action. Customers are requesting Data portrayed over the Internet in Tablets, Smartphones, iPads well as at the PC.

5. Visualising the Data and Interacting with the OCS
We plan to provide two system configurations which will allow data from OCS devices to be embedded in web pages and then viewed via the internet on any supported web browser.
Individual OCS hosting web pages, in a similar manner to the current inbuilt OCS web server, but with greatly enhanced graphic capabilities
Aggregated data from a network of OCS devices, pushed to a database on a cloud server and served from there.
The web pages can be developed by the systems engineers using GrEdit, avoiding a learning curve in applying this new technology.

6. OCS hosts Web Pages
In this system the OCS has the component files which implement the web site loaded on to it’s removable media card.
The files are all of types supported by all mainstream browsers – html5, svg and javascript.
The system is similar in functionality to the long standing OCS web server functionality but has much enhanced graphics capabilities and better links to the OCS register data.

7. Server hosts Web pages
In this system the component files which implement the web site are loaded to a cloud or LAN based server running Horner’s Portal system.
Again the files are all of types supported by mainstream browsers – html5, svg and javascript.
Here data for the web pages is taken from an SQL database to which the individual OCS devices are linked using the Horner Push Data package

8. Portal - Partitioned Web Spaces for Multiple Clients
Individual Clients are assigned space on the Portal server to host a web site.
The spaces are fully isolated and inaccessible from each other.

9. True Web Components
A key requirement when designing the Web Hosting system was to ensure that the systems uses only ‘true web components’
By limiting the system to be composed only of HTML5, SVG and Javascript files, all mainstream browsers are known to be compatible with the files used, and so the pages are all viewable on Android, iOS, Windows and Linux based devices.

10. Using GrEdit to Create Web Site files
Cscape itself will be usable to create Web Sites for display by the web hosting options using the features in GrEdit, the Cscape graphics editor. Created web sites can then be exported to the target web host using a generator utility which produces a suite of ‘pure web’ files (svg/html5/javascript).

11. Data Flow - GrEdit exports Web Site files

12. Existing Functionality
As previously discussed this development is intended to address inadequacies in the current functionality of EnvisionRV and the OCS Inbuilt Web Server.
Whilst we see that EnvisionRV will continue to have a place in factory wide systems, the Portal solution would be a much better option for cloud based systems, whilst the inbuilt OCS web hosting solution would completely replace the current web browser functionality.