COOPERATION PROJECT TO ADVANCE SUPPORT FOR EDDL TECHNOLOGY
12 July 2005 - Fieldbus Foundation

EDDL is a text-based language for describing the digital communication characteristics of intelligent devices and equipment parameters in an Operating System and Human Machine Interface neutral environment. EDDL enables a host system manufacturer to create a single engineering environment that can support any device, from any supplier, using any communications protocol, without the need for custom software drivers for each device type.

In early 2004, the EDDL specifications of the Fieldbus Foundation, HART and Profibus organizations were unified in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61804-2 international standard. More than 15,000,000 field devices based on EDDL have been installed worldwide.

The EDDL maintenance team, as a contribution to the IEC, will advance maintenance of Electronic Device Description technology. This includes specifying compliance tests and developing a general test procedure. A steering committee consisting of representatives of the four user groups will oversee the project.

According to Fieldbus Foundation President and CEO Richard Timoney, the cooperation project will protect industry investments in EDDL by enabling additional enhancements to the IEC standard. 'The Fieldbus Foundation strongly supports the effort to advance IEC 61804-2, which harmonized and extended the contents of the FOUNDATION fieldbus, HART and Profibus EDD specifications,' said Timoney. 'The EDDL standard assists suppliers faced with developing intelligent instrumentation that is compatible with multiple protocols. The technology streamlines the device development process and lowers the cost of bringing new products to market.'

Timoney indicated that EDDL technology enables end users to achieve unsurpassed levels of interoperability and device integration. 'EDDL provides the freedom to choose best-in-class automation products from the suppliers of your choice, delivers the power to integrate devices to achieve optimum control strategies, and allows easy and efficient system upgrades,' he said. 'In addition, it provides consistency and ease of use when developing human interfaces across multiple systems and platforms.'

The original EDDL cooperation project, completed in the Fall of 2004, developed enhancements that have been incorporated into the respective FOUNDATION fieldbus, HART and Profibus technologies and are now being incorporated into the OPC Foundation's Unified Architecture specification. The enhancements extended the concept of interoperability to the HMI and diagnostic data level with improved visualization and graphical features. Specific enhancements focused on device data organization, graphical visualization consistency, and support for persistent data storage. Today, EDDL technology supports systems that are backward compatible with the existing base.

With EDDL, device developers do not need to deal with the burden of designing and programming a graphic display system to run under a variety of platforms and environments, from large HMIs to the small handheld. Instead, they can utilize common graphic display capabilities provided by commands in the EDDL. Since many host systems today already implement EDDL-based graphic display systems, devices using the extended EDDL have a common look and feel with existing devices. This permits uniform integration, configuration/setup, operation and diagnostics/maintenance, all very important in an interoperable, multi-vendor environment.

EDDL also provides operating system and platform independence, eliminating the need for special 'plug-in' executable code that is costly to develop and can jeopardize the host's control over the human interface and operating environment. In addition, extended EDDLs follow proven test and registration procedures, including the same strict revision control policies as today's EDDLs, thus eliminating problems in the field.

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