Dallas Water Utilities' East Side Water Treatment Plant has been undergoing a series of major
expansions and improvements, including the implementation of a new and expanded
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, using Intellution® software, which
has improved the staff's ability to monitor and control plant processes. Recognizing that the
SCADA system provided much of the information required for management and regulatory
reports, a project was undertaken to develop a reports module (RM) that would automate, or
semi-automate, a number of reports using data collected by the SCADA system.
While a number of commercial SCADA reporting tools exist, it soon became apparent that very
few, if any, of the targeted reports could be generated solely with the data contained in the
SCADA system. Invariably, the reports involved a combination of SCADA data and non-
SCADA data (i.e., data that is collected manually). Three alternatives were considered for the RM: extract SCADA data into Microsoft Excel® and manually enter
non-SCADA data;
develop data entry screens within the SCADA system to input
non-SCADA data, then use a commercial SCADA reporting tool to
generate reports; or,
use a combination of Microsoft SQL Server® and Microsoft
Access® to develop a custom solution for data entry, storage, and
reporting. Alternative 1 was determined to be inflexible and insecure. Data stored in multiple Excel®
spreadsheets are not easy to query or analyze, and can be accidentally overwritten or
misplaced. Alternative 2 involved using a SCADA system to do what it is not really best suited
for, manual data entry. And since the Intellution® SCADA system in use at the East Side plant
does not store historical data in a relational database, it was deemed somewhat inflexible.
Alternative 3 was selected because it offered a good combination of flexibility and security.
Microsoft SQL Server®, a robust relational database, was selected for data storage, offering
more security and flexibility than the first two alternatives. Microsoft Access® was selected as
the integration platform. Its intrinsic form and report-building tools, ability to integrate data
from external sources, and embedded Visual Basic for Applications® (VBA) programming
environment, made it well suited for this project. Includes figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 340 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 8 |
| Published : | 04/01/2005 |
