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CAPE-OPEN UPDATE, Volume 8
CAPE-OPEN UPDATE is a publication of the CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network (CO-LaN), a non-profit consortium for the development of the CAPE-OPEN standard.
STAFF LISTING:
Kerry Irons, Editor
Editorial Board: Peter Banks, Bertrand Braunschweig, Celeste Colantonio, Ronald-Alexander Klein, Werner Merk, Hans Pingen, Michel Pons
Technical Support: ADDUCE GmbH
Information Technologies II:
An education program involving CAPE-OPEN standard
April, 2004
Jean-Pierre Belaud, Associate Professor
Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse - Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Ingénieurs en Arts Chimiques et Technologique
Laboratoire de Génie Chimique, CNRS UMR 5503
118 Route de Narbonne, F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
Thanks to Didier Paen, Laurent Testard, Philippe Thiabaud, RSI - France, and Michel Pons
, TOTAL - France, for their inputs and to Kerry Irons, Dow Chemical Company - USA, for his review.
Keywords
Education, Information technologies, Component and object-oriented approach, middleware, open architecture and interface, unit operation,
dynamic simulation, operator training systems, CAPE-OPEN, INDISS tool
Abstract
This short paper introduces an education program that was done in the ENSIACET School of INPT University. The program mixes academic
and industrial contributions. The main objective is to teach information technologies, especially open architecture and component based
approach, and then to apply these concepts to process engineering using an industrial tool and an open standard. This standard,
CAPE-OPEN, is taught. It allows the students to integrate their compliant unit operations in the INDISS environment provided by RSI
company.
Contents
Context
Overview of Information Technologies courses
Objectives
Planning and content
Students’ evaluation
Scenario of workshop 4
Main results, reactions and perspectives
Context and overview of Information Technologies courses
ENSIACET (www.ensiacet.fr) is a “grande école”
enclosing 5 departments that trains high level scientists and engineers in the field of the transformation of matter from the molecular
scale to industrial process scale. Please refer to the appendix for more information on ENSIACET.
The education program called Information Technologies II (IT II) is organized for the third-year students who have selected the
Process Engineering and Computingdepartment. This program comes after a course called Information Technologies I
(IT I) done during the second year. This document is not really a technical paper. It is a description of IT II education project
involving CAPE-OPEN and our feedback on this pioneering experience.
The first general course IT I is mainly focused on (web) technologies. It discusses the Internet, computing history,
information systems, needs for integration and interoperability, open computing, standardization process and web dynamic/semantic.
We introduce HTML, Microsoft ASP, XML and Java principles (object-oriented concepts and C++ programming language are taught in other
courses). We demonstrate the merging of Web and object/component technologies. The practical classes of IT I are essentially focused
on HTML development.
Then Information Technologies II intends to study more advanced technologies and to work with industrial applications.
In IT I, students learn the basics and are exposed to the CO standard, working with the RSI application. IT II moves to specialisation
with more depth on the CO standard and an industrial example of process engineering (in this case from Total). This program gathered
two education units (2*9h30) and two conferences (2*1h20) at end of 2003. 14 students followed the units
and 32 students attended to both conferences.
The education units are done with contribution of Laurent Testard and Philippe Thiabaud from
RSI Laurent Testard is computing sciences expert and is in charge of RSI product development. Especially he develops the
technical classes. Philippe Thiabaud is process engineering expert and leads project on Operating Training Systems. He builds dedicated
simulators starting from generic classes provided by INDISS environment. Altogether they bring their expertises on computing sciences
and process engineering aspects in the scope of INDISS solution.
The conferences are proposed by Michel Pons from TOTAL and Didier Paen from RSI. Michel Pons speaks also for
the CO-LaN organization. Didier Paen manages the research and development of the INDISS product.
Objectives
The main objectives of this program are to teach information technologies and to apply them in the scope of process simulation
thanks to CAPE-OPEN standard (CO). We identify several topics in our initial objectives:
IT: software architecture, open
standards, middleware and interface concept, component based approach, software engineering, UML modeling, design-implementation with
“round-trip engineering” (code generation), C++ component development, perspectives (web services)
Process engineering: INDISS solution, motivations and usage of dynamic
simulation, dynamic simulation principles in sequential modular, dynamic unit operation, development of a made-to-order dynamic simulator,
demonstration of a complex industrial Operator Training System with DCS emulation.
IT & Process engineering: CAPE-OPEN standard principles, CO-LaN organization,
CO components demonstrations, CO compliant unit operation development, integration of third-party application in compliant environment.
Others:CAPE software provider, industrial feedback from a large and small
company, industrial software development project, standardization process and community common effort, connection with INPT research for
the CO initiative.
In addition, the students practice the following tools in the Windows 2000 environment, having already used Visual C++ and Rose
previously.
Borland VisiBroker for C++ 4.0, an ORB for CORBA middleware
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, an integrated development environment
Rational Rose Enterprise 2002, a UML modelling tool
INDISS 1.5, process modelling and simulation environment
CAPE-OPEN 1.0 and dynamic unit operation interface, a standard for the
interoperability and the integration of process engineering software components
The INDISS environment (INDustrial and Integrated Simulation Software, www.rsi-france.com
provides a simulation framework for the whole process life cycle. INDISS integrates up-to-date technologies and avoids the duplication
of modelling and simulating efforts by creating a single model for all the different purposes of modelling and simulation. It
specifically covers five kinds of needs: Operability and Controllability Studies, Operator Training Simulation (OTS), Process Operation
Support, Advanced Process Control and Process Optimisation. The students practice OTS functionality through two specific flowsheets,
Depropaniser and Drum.
Planning and content
The students have followed seven theoretical classes, seven practical classes and both conferences. Theoretical class elements include:
Introduction, Internet, Software architecture, Paradigms, Middleware technologies, Conclusion & Perspectives, Dynamic simulation and
INDISS tool while practical classes propose four workshops. The TOTAL and CO-LaN conference deals with TOTAL activities, CO, CO-LaN
and CO interoperability videos while the RSI talk presents RSI software solutions, software engineering, development methodology and the
RSI CO strategy. The planning is summarized in the following:
Course no. Type View Educator(s)
1 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
2 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
3 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
4 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
5 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
6 Theoretical Web solutions Belaud
7 Workshop 1 Web solutions Belaud
8 Workshop 2 Web solutions Belaud
9 Workshop 2 Web solutions Belaud
10 Theoretical Process engineering Thiabaud, Testard
11 Workshop 3 Process engineering Thiabaud, Belaud
12 Workshop 3 Process engineering Thiabaud, Belaud
13 Workshop 4 Process solutions Testard, Belaud
14 Workshop 4 Process solutions Testard, Belaud
15 TOTAL conference Process solutions Pons, Belaud
16 RSI conference Process solutions Paen, Belaud
The students work on three kinds of problems with a web solutions development view, a process engineering view and a process software solutions integrator view.
Each view is practiced in the workshops.
The aim of workshop 1 and 2 is to apply the web solutions development view. The keywords are object-oriented concepts, C++, UML,
CORBA components, interface and unified process. The application consists of developing two basic software components which are based
on CORBA middleware technology. A component offers a service on the network acting as the business model server. The second
component plays the role of presentation client. These two components are compliant with an interface. This interface is
previously designed jointly following a process based on UML modelling. 8 diagrams are drawn during the different phases of the process.
This process is defined by the analysis, design, specification, implementation and validation/deployment phases.
Some readers can remember the process followed in CO projects. The CORBA IDL is not difficult. It is just analyzed since it is
generated automatically from the interface or component diagram with the Rose tool. We design a basic interface on the basis of a bank
account and the interface is “standardized” at the level of the classroom for interworking of components issued from each
group. Once both components are developed, they are deployed on the INPT-ENSIACET network. The component clients identify, contact and
call the component servers on the same and remote hosts. During workshops 1 and 2, the students operate Rose, VisiBroker and Visual C++.
Workshop 3 proposes a usual process engineering view. At this level, our students' new knowledge resides in the
dynamic simulation in sequential modular and in the use of INDISS CAPE tool, knowing that our students are trained in simulation
with the ProSimPlus product from ProSim SA (www.prosim.net). The students have to use the tool,
understand its graphical interface, and use and run simulations on the Depropaniser flowsheet. They run different
scenarios, such as changing the reflux controller on a distillation column, and then they analyze the simulation results.
The workshop 4 mixes process engineering and IT according to the process software solutions integrator view, knowing that
the introduction of the CAPE-OPEN standard has been discussed and worked with previously. The students develop their own compliant
unit operation making use of an INDISS template and then they plug the resulting component into the CO compliant INDISS environment
flowsheet. The template, a set of C++ files, provides a basis for the technical layer such as the CO Parameters, constructors,
destructors, etc. The NetworkCompute() method is empty and has to be completed once the template is understood. The flowsheet
is a basic Drum. We did not use the depropaniser flowsheet from workshop 3 due to technical reasons. The underlying middleware
technology is COM and the programming language is always C++.
Students’ Evaluation
Before starting the workshop 3 and 4, the students had to produce two one-page reports on the CAPE-OPEN initiative and on the INDISS
tool. In addition to web resources, a scientific paper on CAPE-OPEN and the introduction to INDISS document are provided (from J.P.
Belaud and B. Braunschweig, CAPE-OPEN: interopérabilité de composants logiciels pour la modélisation de
procédés physico-chimiques, ICSSEA 2003, Software & Systems Engineering and their applications). The objective of this
first work was to prepare the courses from 10 to 16 that unify academic and industrial contributions.
After the completion of IT II program, each group of students had to make a report on the workshops. This year the evaluation was
essentially on workshop 1, 2 and 3. The UML model, the associated materials that document the development process, and the thinking
on a set of questions and comments were the core of the report. Also the description and the analysis of a scenario of workshop 3 were
requested. No formal evaluation was done on workshop 4 for the first presentation of this program.
Scenario of workshop 4
The main practical objective of workshop 4 is the development of a CO compliant dynamic unit operation (UO) component and its
integration within a CO compliant environment. The actual scenario was shared in three parts such as:
First step: objectives and recording of COM components
To open a Windows session (development account with specific rights)
To get CO dynamic UO Visual Studio workspace
To record CO components and to identify CO categories in registry
Second step: template for CO compliant dynamic UO development
To understand the Visual Studio workspace for development of CO UO
To see the software design with UML modelling
To analyze the C++ source files: CCOArcExampleImpl.h/.cpp, …
To build the project and to get the arc component («empty » UO, no process engineering model)
To customize the arc rgs file: Name, Categories, …
Third step: development of arc component and integration in INDISS
To add a CO Parameter (Cv)
To implement the process engineering model (flow calculation)
To build the arc component (.dll file)
To deploy the arc component on an RSI laptop available on the education network
To integrate it within the INDISS environment
To run the drum flowsheet and to check the arc component dynamic behaviour (see Figure 3)
One technical problem was identified the day before workshop 4. The final integration on ENSIACET Windows machines was not possible.
This is due to a complex problem related to the COM component record of arc component in the Windows registry. To do it with an
administrator account did not solve the problem. Therefore, once the components were built by students on ENSIACET machines, the
deployment, integration and validation were realized on RSI laptop.
Main results, reactions and perspectives
The education program called Information Technologies II was successfully completed at the end of 2003 at INP Toulouse-ENSIACET
University. An associate professor and industrial contributors from RSI and TOTAL were involved. To announce and develop such a
program is not so obvious for many reasons; pedagogic difficulties, industrial availability, agendas, financial costs, INDISS
installation, classroom Windows configuration, licensing, etc. Working with the CO dynamic unit operation specification coupling
with an in-development INDISS version for the workshop 4 has especially intensified the challenge. So we have to say that we are very
satisfied by the outcomes of this first offering of the course.
As a result the effective education benefits are:
Concepts and methodologies: software architecture, standards, development process,
standardization process, component based approach, middleware technologies, IDL interfaces, design-implementation connection,
automatic code generation, UML modelling, process engineering oriented integration, services oriented perspectives, dynamic simulation,
OTS, R&D industrial project.
Technologies: CORBA, VisiBroker, INDISS, Rose, C++, CAPE-OPEN standard, CAPE-OPEN compliant COM
components.
We got a fervent reaction from ENSIACET education staff. The education chief thanks the industrial representativess for their
contributions, for their support for limiting education program costs and asks for ongoing support for this project the next year.
From the perspective of students, a feedback form reveals that they are clearly satisfied. In summary, 2 students said us
“correct”, 8 “good” and 4 “very good”.
Of course, many ways of improvement can be considered such as to extend the schedule of workshop 4, to work with a more
“complex” UO model, to have the same INDISS process flowsheet for workshop 3 and 4 and to integrate and run CO components
on ENSIACET PCs. Also it would be interesting to have an industrial conference on the scope of IT & process simulation in the 2nd
year.
In a long term view, an interesting way would be to re-use the unit operation model the students have developed in the
process modelling and simulation course during their second year. More connections with other education courses would
expand the innovative IT II program.
Acknowledgments
The students, the education chief and I would like to thank Laurent Testard, Philippe Thiabaud, Michel Pons and Didier Paen for their
contributions to this inventive project and their active and enthusiastic involvement. INPT-ENSIACET thanks RSI for the
availability for the workshops of INDISS product with no charge and CO-LaN for coveringMichel Pons’ travel costs. Personally
I just want to add I really enjoy developing this program with them.
About the Author
Jean-Pierre Belaud led research and development efforts in the areas of Computer Aided Process Engineering. Mainly since January
1997 he participated to the exciting project of a standardisation process. So he was involved in the projects that resulted in the
CAPE-OPEN standard and the associated CO-LaN consortium. He was in charge of these projects for the INPT institute. Qualified in
chemical and computing engineering in 1996, he brought his expertise in the CAPE and software development fields. Since September 2003
he is associate professor at INPT-ENSIACET University (www.ensiacet.fr). He is especially in
charge of IT and computing education programs for Process Engineering and Computing department and Industrial System Engineering
department. On the research side, he is working in the Process Systems Engineering team of CNRS-LGC
(see website).
More information on ENSIACET and Process Engineering and Computing department
ENSIACET (A7, www.ensiacet.fr) is a “Grande Ecole”, which is strongly committed to
training engineers of a high scientific and technical standard, in the field of transforming material, from its molecular form to large
scale industrial processes. A7 is one of three engineering schools) of INPT (Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse,
www.inp-toulouse.fr).
As all French “Grandes Ecoles”, ENSIACET recruits students via a national competitive examination, taken at the end of
a two-year common core curriculum, called “Superior Mathematics” and “Special Mathematics” following
Baccalauréat, equivalent to A-level. The students are awarded their Engineer Degree after the completion of three years at
ENSIACET; this degree is equivalent to a Master of Science degree.
A7 has guaranteed for a long time two main objectives: training and research, which are carried out in tight collaboration with the
industrial sector. Four research laboratories are connected to A7:
LGC, Chemical Engineering
LCA, Agro-Industrial Chemistry
LCCFP, Catalysis, fine chemistry and polymers
CIRIMAT, Material Science and Engineering
Today, A7 welcomes 750 students, who benefit from a high level scientific and technical environment, 105 teachers and researchers, and
also from the support of a technical and administrative staff of about 100 people. Created in 2001 by the merging of the ex
Chemistry (ENSCT) and Chemical Engineering (ENSIGC) Schools, A7 inherits of one century of Education and Research experience, with more
than 4000 awarded engineers.
The A7 Process Engineering and Computing engineer has a deep theoretical and practical background in Chemical Engineering, the mastery
of mathematical, numerical and computing methods and tools and a general training in economical, human and social sciences.
The A7 Process Engineering and Computing engineer is able to manage the process all along its life cycle. By using modelling,
simulation and optimization techniques, he has a rigorous and integrated approach to process synthesis, design and operation, taking
into account economic constraints, but also safety, environmental, flexibility and controllability constraints. This training
gives an engineer the skills to efficiently contribute to multidisciplinary projects in the chemical, petrochemical, nuclear, bio and
food industries.
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