The ArchestrAnaut

I think any good App Server engineer needs to learn about checkpointing.  It’s such a critical piece of how App Server does what it does that you can’t simply be ignorant of it.  Fortunately it works so well that most people never have to troubleshoot it… as opposed to troubleshooting why you can’t get communications with a platform to deploy something.

Here’s an article that came out a couple days ago that discusses some instances where the checkpointing system may not act appropriately, or at least how you think it should.

Mash Here

The second article discusses the success of using App Server on the High Speed Chinese Rail project.  I haven’t had  a chance to read it yet but I expect it will be really good.  I think anytime someone tries to tell you App Server can’t scale you can point to this as published evidence of the fact that it can.

Mash Here

One of my co-workers has started what should be a fantastic blog about numerous topics in the manufacturing software space.  I don’t use the term MES because the topics are much broader than just MES.  Jimmy has been around this world for a number of years.  He’s one of the guys that can tell you “oh yeah that software, it’s actually using this other software under the hood but they got bought by this people so…”.  He knows the material and the players that well.  Speaking of players I already know of a couple high profile folks in the space that will be guest contributors.  I won’t say who but trust me, you’ll enjoy the content. 

The name Level3 comes from one of the identified levels in the ANSI ISA-95 standard.  Here’s a quick blurb from the site’s about page to give you more of a sense of what Jimmy’s going for here.

Coming from that namesake, this blog will serve as a venue to discuss various topics:  Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM), Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS).   Aside from the alphabet soup, we will discuss, in general, the integration of data from the ‘shop floor’ up; these include advanced SCADA systems, Historians, reporting and IT Topics.

Whether you identify your role as Operations, IT and/or Engineering, we hope that you find something of interest and contribute.

http://www.avidsolutionsinc.com/blog/level3/

Take a few minutes to go check it out or even better yet, subscribe.  Chances are if the material we’re presenting here is interesting then you’ll definitely be interested in what Jimmy, and Jed have to say.

Thanks,
Andy

Our friends (it’s really just Scott but it sounds more official ) over at ContactAndCoil.com have posted a couple really thought provoking articles.

http://www.contactandcoil.com/automation/from-automation-to-fabrication/

The first deals with what happens when you take fabrication to a level where you are only limited by your imagination.  It sounds crazy but we’ve made very few advances that actually moved the needle without some crazy guy in the lab and a little money to back them up.

http://www.contactandcoil.com/uncategorized/hacking-the-free-market/

Scott’s second post is a bit of a thesis on market dynamics and the interplay with our natural resources.  Something I certainly agree with is that simple energy efficiency isn’t going to get us from here to there; there being an an environment where we are all in perfect balance.  This made me think of a talk given by Dr. John Lienhard on his radio show, Engines of our Ingenuity.  If you haven’t had a chance to read his work or listen to his talks they are truly inspiring for the hopeful engineer.  Anyway, back to my point.  Once of his episodes sometime in the early 2000’s (can’t round it up for some reason) discussed what in the world we were going to do when we run out of oil.  Basically his take on the topic was that throughout mankind’s history (and he cites numerous examples) we came upon what the people of the day thought was the end, doom and gloom ruled the day because they were going to run out of this or they couldn’t deal with some dire issue.  Every time some really smart people got together and lots of effort combined with an appetite for change somehow solved the issues of the day.  As Scott alludes to in his post, I have a hunch we’ll come up with something when the time really comes, I’m just not sure what that something is.  When we do we’ll all say “Wow!  How about that innovation, never saw that coming.”.

If you are a blogger on a decent platform one of the metrics you will see is what kind of search terms people used to find out.  We run WordPress so we get this kind of useful intel.  When I see certain terms I want to run off and write a white paper on it because some is interested and I want to teach.  Unfortunately I just don’t have that kind of time.   With that in mind I have decided to take a handful of search terms, either frequent ones or interesting ones, and write a one or two line blurb about each.  They may distill down to even to two or three world comment.  Hopefully it will help someone along the way.

So,  without furuther ado I present the First Edition of of Search Term Lightning Round

Read the rest of this entry »

I have felt for the longest time that one of the biggest problems holding back Archestra was Wonderware’s inability to communicate what exactly it did and how it benefited the system integrator and end-user.  This article by Steve Garbrecht from Invensys does a wonderful job summarizing the “big idea” and true value proposition behind Archestra technology.

http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Current_Issue&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=83571

Enjoy,

Andy