Three separate fieldbus control organizations are cooperating to extend the specification of Device Descriptive Language (DDL), a text-based language for describing characteristics of field devices.
The Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communication Foundation, and PROFIBUS Nutzerorganization (the German unit of PROFIBUS International), will work on defining advanced visualizations for diagnostic and calibration procedures. "As products become more complex, additional functionality in the device descriptions are needed to allow better graphical user interfaces," says Will Chin, a research director at ARC Advisory Group. "They want to see pictograms of where interferences might be."
Chin says even though each architecture has unique DDL attributes, the languages are similar enough that the three decided to partner in order to reduce development costs as they extend the specification. "I suspect it a good thing. Ultimately all these things will get closer together," says Chin.