New distribution of CAPE-OPEN interface definitions

31 JULY 2021

Logo of CO-LaN smallAt the meeting held jointly by the Interoperability Special Interest Group and the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group on July 28, 2021, the new version of the installers for the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies have been assessed as ready for distribution. This new version was developed by AmsterCHEM, Céondo GmbH and Marcus Bruno FERNANDES SILVA under contract from CO-LaN.

Version 2.1.1 of the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies is therefore made available from the download section of the “CAPE-OPEN IDL” project repository. It replaces version 2.0 which was released on February 23, 2017. The archive containing version 2.0 has been downloaded 1344 times since it was made available.

All developers of applications implementing CAPE-OPEN for interoperability between process simulation software are invited to make use of version 2.1.1 that brings in the definitions for Flowsheeting Monitoring and Custom Data interfaces. These definitions are accessed through an additional CAPE-OPEN type library named “CAPE-OPENv1-1-0-ext Library.tlb” and carrying the namespace CAPEOPEN110EXTENSION. The corresponding textual specifications have been released for some time now. Release of type libraries and primary interop assemblies containing the interface definitions for these specifications was needed for implementation of these interfaces to take place.

Small modifications to the logic behind the distribution packages have been applied. They will be explained in a new version of the developer guide for CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies. This new version is currently under review within CO-LaN.

The distribution remains an archive containing a set of two merge modules and two installation packages. One merge module installs the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies for 32-bit applications while the other merge module does the same for 64-bit applications. All the logic and data for the installation and uninstallation are contained in the merge modules. The installation packages use the merge module of their respective bitness and add a User Interface – including presentation of an End User License Agreement and the logic to handle per-User and per-Machine installations.

There are now three CAPE-OPEN type libraries (TLB) installed:

  • one TLB for version 1.0 of the CAPE-OPEN standard (identical to the one released in version 2.0 of the installers),
  • one TLB for version 1.1 of the CAPE-OPEN standard (identical to the one released in version 2.0 of the installers),
  • an extra TLB (the “Extension” TLB) for the additional CAPE-OPEN interface definitions of Flowsheet Monitoring and Custom Data.

The “Extension” TLB will be used to add future additions brought to version 1.1 of the CAPE-OPEN standard.