>> Has any one tried to use Novell 5 for Windows as the operating >> system in a HMI/SCADA server/client application?
YES.
Just say NO to Novell
The HMI/SCADA system was very proprietary and used B-Trieve as the underlying data base engine. The file system was fast, but had bottlenecks in accessing data.
We replaced it with Fix/Dynamics and Infolink from Cimnet using SQL-Server as the database engine. We are running Windows-NT for both client and server.
The biggest benefit, is third-party add-ons. We are generally able to add components very quickly and very cheaply, since the Windows-NT and SQL-Server markets are very large, and very competitive.
William F. Hullsiek Software Engineer Renewal by Andersen