Fix

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Thread Starter

George Robertson

Anyone care to weigh in on Fix Dynamix versus Fix 32 from Intellution?

[email protected]
George G. Robertson, P.E.
Manager of Engineering
Saulsbury Engineering and Construction
 
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Rick L. Hudson EMCO Inc.

I've used FIX32 extensively and Fix Dynamics a little. My impression is that FIX 32 is a great SCADA and, if the choice is between the two, I prefer FIX to Dynamics. If you need the options that Dynamics touts, its a lot better to do the whole thing in VB.

I must qualify the last sentence with the position that I'm coming to the conclusion, based on experience that, in the hands of a good programmer, VB can do anything any SCADA can but at much lower software cost.

Rick Hudson
[email protected]
 
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> I must qualify the last sentence with the position that I'm coming to the
> conclusion, based on experience that, in the hands of a good programmer, VB
> can do anything any SCADA can but at much lower software cost.

VB is a powerful tool, and ultimately since you can develop all sorts of Windows applications with it this statement will hold true about any application. Eg: in the hands of a good programmer, VB can do anything a word processor can do too. Whether it is worth it or not depends on the quality (and other advantages) of the packaged solution.

I have not used Fix, and a look at my email address will show my particular bias. Taking that into consideration, I would make the following points:

1. Maintainence. Unless your VB is very well documented, then maintainence after you have moved on can be very difficult. Finding engineers trained in any SCADA package is easier to do. [If your documentation is anything like mine, then maintaining it yourself a few weeks later can be hard too!]

2. Reliability. As a programmer myself I know only too well that the more people who are using a product, the better tested it is and (provided the developers actually respond to problems) the more reliable it is. Using libraries of code which get used for multiple projects/customers is not just about re-using code, it's about re-using fixes to that code, and a boxed solution takes things one step further. For example, designing a system with full redundancy and hot standby facilities - and making it work reliably - takes a lot of work. If your SCADA has full support for this built in, then it is far more likely to work out of the box (and if it doesn't it is not your
problem :).

3. Built in functionality. If, in your VB application, you have the desire to try something different, you'll have to develop the code to
do it. Something you might have done if it was just a "switch it on and use it" tool you would just not bother doing. Using the word processor analogy, you might find yourself formatting things using tabs and spaces, because you don't use tables enough to make it worth implementing them.

All of this changes if you are having to write large amounts of code anyway, to make the "out of the box" application work for you. If Word only does what you want if you write huge amounts of VBA, then there comes a point where dumping it and writing a new word processor in VB makes sense. Alternatively, you could just change your word processor!

Personally, I would say that it is better to find a good SCADA which does all the boring stuff, like communications, alarm handling,
networking/redundancy, reporting etc "out of the box", but which is also open enough to let you use your programming skill to add the bells and whistles you want on top. Yes, you will have to pay a license where you would not with VB. However, from my experience when the real cost of ownership is looked at, buying something good off the shelf will almost always work out more cost effective than writing your own. Which is, of-course, why companies like Microsoft (and my own employer) are still in business.

Mark

[All opinions my own and not my employers, of-course.]
 
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