A service-oriented domain specific language programming approach for batch processes

Abstract

The demand for flexible automation architectures in industry is raising, due to the trend to individualized products and the shortening of product life-cycles in general. Current approaches in automation systems are either only suited for a small range of processes or are only reprogrammable by software and automation experts. The presented domain specific language based approach decouples production-domain concerns from the automation program, by separating the process description into a specialized domain language. This domain language can be used by plant owners and domain experts to define and execute vastly different processes, as long as the needed process steps are supported by the actual automation system. This contribution demonstrates the development of a domain-centric SOA-based batch process automation system, by creating a directly executable DSL based on domain terms found in ISA-88.