A
system and method provide for the creation and operation of real-time enterprise-wide, personalize supervisory and
control data acquisition systems. Personalized
SCADA applications are constructed from a virtual application service and a personal agent framework using simple
drag and drop operations or other high level action. The virtual application service includes a communications gateway that communicates with disparate and non-interoperable systems and
external field devices to communicate low level
time data collected from such systems into the application environment transforming the collected data in a single
common data format. The virtual application service includes application cells that receive the reformatted data and process it to provide
high level analysis and context, storing the processed data in an
object server. The
object server provides a unified, hierarchical
object model for all of the data received from the underlying devices and systems. The virtual application service communicates with personal agent frameworks containing presentation cells and service agents. The service agents are representative of the virtual application service, and provide the personal agent framework with access to the
object server to receive and send data from the object
server to the presentation cells. The presentation cells subscribe to the object
server's
data objects via the service agent. Presentation
cell provide a graphical representation and mapping of
data objects and hence underlying devices and systems, to allow a user to manage and control such systems.