Sunday, June 20, 2010

MTConnect 1.1 C++ Agent and the C++ Adapter Framework

This is from the latest MTConnect Newsletter that Paul Warndorf, VP of Technology and CTO for AMT- The Association for Manufacturing Technology.....

There have been some major enhancements to the reference implementation of the MTConnect 1.1 C++ Agent and the C++ adapter framework. There is a binary download available for Windows. All *NIX platforms can easily build from this source and includes:
  • Full support for the 1.1 version of the standard. We have added the at parameter to current to get snapshots at any point in time and we have added support for condition. The agent is fully backward compatible, so it will function correctly with 1.0 agents and XML configurations.
  • The new 1.1 agent and 1.1 adapter now support heartbeats. This will provide faster detection of disconnects between the agent and the adapter and higher reliability. With the new unavailability support, this makes detection of stale data much more reliable in the applications.
  • We have removed the libxml2++ library to make the Windows build simpler; we got the added benefit of reduced memory requirements and higher performance as a result. All the tests now work properly on Windows as well and no additional DLL are required with the exe.
  • The buffer size is now configurable to support devices with smaller amounts of memory.
  • We have performed significant performance and memory testing and it is now much lighter weight and reliable.
Thanks to Will Sobel President and CEO of System Insights for his tremendous leadership in the MTConnect 1.1 standard.