Skortier,
I'm also very pleased to see your response. As Ralph said, it really does show how well our online communities can work. Just FYI, I do have the SP5 release and patch installed. Also, I have been documenting the issue on the Indusoft forum. Assuming a database rebuild corrects the problem, I agree with Ralph that the real problem is with neither Indusoft or Ingres ... but more associated with my lack of experience with Unicode character sets.
If that is the case, some additional notes within the Indusoft documentation may be warranted, or perhaps the option to allow/prevent use of Unicode characters? Also some more informative information may result within the Ingres error log. In the end ... we should all be happy!! Anyway, I'll try the database rebuild before getting too excited ...
Also, although I would like to resolve this issue, if all else fails I do have a work-around. That involves using a standard query to populate a class tag array, and displaying the array within the grid object. I know this approach works, as I have used it before. However it has the downside of potentially consuming a large number of additional tags.
This issue aside, I have to say that I'm quite excited by the prospect of using such powerful products as Ingres and Indusoft together within industrial systems. I think I've already mentioned this in an earlier post. But seriously, this particular combination together with current industrial PC technology (especially touch panel PCs), provides the opportunity to construct very direct interfaces between shop floor equipment, process support & control databases and corporate systems, at what I would suggest are historically low costs.
Compared to the kind of systems I've been constructing over the last 23 or so years (embedded proprietary single board computers, serial network protocols to host applications, serial terminal devices), the power and flexibility offered by this kind of technology pairing is simply amazing! For example ...
using Ingres and Indusoft I can:
- collect data from and provide supervisory control of a wide range of machinery
- talk directly to our corporate SAP system utilising Visual Basic Script, ftp etc
- record data directly into Ingres for performance and production measurement
- display/utilise/update data held in other associated shop floor Ingres databases
- utilise the flexibility of Ingres to make relatively rigid corporate data downloads accessible
- provide graphic, flexible and informative operator interfaces
From an industrial systems point of view, I see Ingres and Indusoft as both being excellent products, but for me the combination is more then the sum of the two parts! SCADA is great for shop floor use, but generally doesn't provide easily accessible performance data. Shop floor databases are potentially great resources, but due to manual recording etc can be unreliable. However, data collected frequently, reliably and automatically from the manufacturing process .... is difficult to ignore!!!
I just wish I was a bigger potential user .... Unfortunately no one will make their fortune from any systems I put in place, as the scale is relatively small!
Here ends the sermon
Regards,
Greg Shearer