SCADA Developer Network

As the friendliness of IntegraXor attracts many SCADA beginners. We often receive basic questions like “What is Tag”, so this is an article dedicated to our beloved newbies. Because of your support, we strive to make SCADA as easy as possible without compromising its rich functionalities.

A specific term used in SCADA, “Tag”, simply means variable in computer language. SCADA is a rapid development application for industrial control & monitoring. The nature of the system requires SCADA to communicate with huge range of external devices like PLC & industry specific meters. link up and access with these devices, various open or proprietary communication protocols can be used. And these devices need to have a mechanism to open up its parameters or data for SCADA to access, either for read, write or both.

Normally the data will be given in the form of addresses or registers, but also possible being given directly in the form of variable string depending on the protocol used. As such the SCADA must assign a variable or memory location to be associated with each and individual interested parameter or data that provides by any device, regardless a hybrid or integrated setup. And this variable is called “Tag”. More specifically, it’s called I/O tag because that’s the only input & output channel of a SCADA. Another name for it is external/physical tag simply because that’s external/physical device out there to access.

In contrast to I/O tag, the internal used variable is called virtual tag, alternatively runtime tag, memory tag, or simply internal tag. Some SCADAs further identity non predefined tag or on the fly creation tag as runtime tag. And some SCADAs also further identify database used tag as archive tag.

SCADA is a niche engineering product that do not have a mess market to spread its heavy development cost. And it will appears to be unaffordable for small scale projects but merely a small fraction of cost for mega projects. As such the quantity of tag used in a SCADA often relates as project sizing. And the price of a SCADA also corresponds to I/O tag count to spread its cost according to projects’ budget. Furthermore a SCADA does need more software engineering works for large scale of memory/tags handling. So it’s fairer to charge more for tag usage. Anyhow some SCADA also charge on virtual or archive tag count.

We have done quite a fair bit of maintenance releases and we didn’t add much features recently, as we were focusing on improving speed and stability. The good news is our driver developers are still adding in major protocols into our driver list.

• Optimize driver, when a tag is not being used in any task nor being displayed, it will not be polled to remove unnecessary traffic. And also allowing parallel polling/writing on applicable devices.
  Credit: Nathan; U.S..
• Added Profinet protocol.
• Added EthernetIP protocol.
• Added Trap function into SNMP protocol.
  credit: Viktor; Hong Kong.
• Enabled Modbus Slave support.
• Added time stamp to alarm Email output.
• Improved SQL pagination & Oracle database interface.
  credit: Adrian; Singapore
• More appealing trending viewer with multiple Y-Axis.
  credit: Ilpo; Finland.
• Added substration function into report module.
  credit: Adrian; Singapore
• Fixed persistence bug that unable to save upon restarting.
  credit: Tanel H.; Estonia.
• Various bug fixes and minor improvements.
• Improved web server security.

Photo credit: “Alonso Renault Pitstop Chinese GP 2008″ by Bert van Dijk

Provider=MSDASQL;Password=password;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=postgres;Extended Properties="Driver={PostgreSQL UNICODE};Server=127.0.0.1;Port=5432;Database=postgres;"


This is a typical Connection String for PostgresQL and this guide will use it as the sample but the concept of this guide can be extended to other ODBC database. You may encounter error here and there in Connetion String while installing or customizing database. Below are some steps to narrow down the troubleshooting scope.

1. [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager]Data source name not found and no default driver specified

   
   
   

   This error shown that the most essential part which is the ODBC driver is not found within machine. You must get the official ODBC Driver correctly installed and configured before looking on other part. First you need to check your ODBC Data Source Administrator. Check out Driver tab, it should have at least two or maybe four PostgresQL ODBC drivers listed.

   

   Ensure the driver name that entered within curly braces {} is exactly match with what is being shown, even one extra leading/trailing space or additional/missing of single space will cause a complete failure in establishing the connection.

   If you started to get other error message, means the ODBC Driver is already correctly installed and configured, check out next possible error.

2. Could not connect to the server; Could not resolve hostname

   

   Unable to connect to server or unable to resolve hostname is due to network connection, just check on Server’s IP address, and very unlikely cause by port number.

3. FATAL: password authentication failed for user

   

   Authentication error shown that either the password entered is wrong or there’s no such user at all. Open up PgAdmin to see if there’s such user and test out the password.

   

   Ensure “Allow saving password” is always checked, otherwise the previously entered password will be removed when you click OK button.

4. FATAL: database does not exist

   

   Database doesn’t not exist simply means as it is. Either the new database name entered is not match or no new database has been created.

Security researcher Andrew Brooks have reported a vulnerability that may occur when a specially crafted HTML document is opened with ActiveX enabled browser, typically Microsoft I.E.. Successful exploitation may crash the said browser. This attack has no impact on IntegraXor SCADA server itself.

IGX developers have taken proactive step to patch the reported vulnerability immediately on the next day, and has been included in latest Release which can be obtained at this link: http://www.integraxor.com/download/beta.msi?4.00.4283. All previous release before build 4283 will have this vulnerability impact. Please download and use this build or any future release to fix this ActiveX enabled browser vulnerability.

We wish to take this opportunity to remind user that IntegraXor SCADA mimic can run completely on standard compliant web technologies and do not rely on any plugin developed using ActiveX nor Java Applet system like other old-fashioned web system. As such please do not accept any suspicious external ActiveX content (web page) when running IntegraXor. User who use Firefox, Chrome or Safari will not be affected by this vulnerability.

Summary of Event

• 12-Dec-2012: ICS CERT Contacted IntegraXor support team.
• 13-Dec-2012: Technical report for the vulnerability is received and POC is acknowledged.
• 14-Dec-2012: Security fixed is issued as release candidate for general download.
• 03-Jan-2013: Security researcher(s) confirmed the vulnerability issue has been fixed.
• 03-Jan-2013: Public announcement is made by IntegraXor support team.

Installaing PostgresQL Database for SCADA can be easily done using default configuration with the following steps.

1. Download & install PostgresQL core database for Windows. The only thing you need to think ahead is the superuser password.
2. Download & install PostgresQL ODBC driver. Just click through the installation wizard.
3. Paste the whole string directly into IGX Project Editor’s database task’s Connection String field:
   
   
   

   Provider=MSDASQL;Password=password;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=postgres;Extended Properties="Driver={PostgreSQL UNICODE};Server=127.0.0.1;Port=5432;Database=postgres;"

   

   
   

4. After pasting into the P.E., click on browsing button [...] at the end of the Connection String cell will pop up the Data Link Properties.
   

   

5. Change the password as per what entered during installation in first step.
6. Click on the “Test Connection” button to validate. You shall get “Test connection succeeded.” if everything is OK.

You may then proceed to start the SCADA engine but in any case you get error messages while clicking on “Test Connection” button, Look out ODBC Driver Troubleshooting guide.