exiphm@eutrc3.urc.tue.nl (h.munk) (07/10/89)
Dear Everybody, I have a question concerning the appropriateness of OOLs for the implementation of a package for real-time continuous process diagnostics. The package, called PRIMAL (= Package for Real-time Interactive, Modeling, Analyses and Learning) is a toolbox for performing diagnostic tests on continuous processes, such as oil refinery process units, chemical plant process units, etc. PRIMAL enables an experimenter to design an experiment (choosing signals to sample, sampling rate, shape and other characteristics of test signals), acquire data, filter and analyze data, perform model estimation, model validation, and, in the near future (Real Soon Now, as Pournelle would tell), controller design and validation. The pleasant thing about PRIMAL is its interactiveness. The experimenter can design and re-design experiments, analyze and use data in real-time: if you see that your experiment is getting you where you want, you can re-design test signals, put in more signals to sample, change filter characteristics, use different model estimation methods, etc. PRIMAL is setup in such a way that it is possible to try out different data analysis tools running on the same data at the same time, in real-time. PRIMALs implementation is something like this: on top of everything is a module called the monitor, which interacts with the user, and which governs the running of other modules. the other modules are invoked by the monitor on user request, and communicate with the user through the monitor. All data is stored in data sets, a kind of meta-files. Each data set has an associated type (vector, matrix, text, model and a few others). The current system is implemented in a FORTRAN-77 subset, and runs on VAX/VMS. The source is some 150K lines of heavily commented source code. My question: is it worth the trouble to re-implement PRIMAL in an object oriented language. As you may have deduced from the foregoing, PRIMAL is heavily compute bound, but computes on very specific things. On the other hand, it is supposed to perform in real- time, and I don't know if that's possible with current OOLs. I am a virtual newcomer to OOLs, so I would like to receive any comments on this. Please EMAIL, and I will post a summary around august 15 (so please email before august 8). +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- - - + + Harm Munk + My boss doesn't understand what - - Institute ITP-TUE/TNO - I'm doing as I don't understand + + Horsten 2 + him. - - 5612 AX EINDHOVEN - + + The Netherlands + - - Phone +31(40)474741 or - + + +31(40)474517 + - - - + +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-