Experion Cache

Business Issue: A sophisticated and critical operator interface was implemented using the Honeywell Experion system as a base. Due to the data-intensive nature of the live objects making up the screens, callup time was unacceptably long, exceeding 30 seconds

Solution: KSC was called in to advise on a possible solution (various staff members having long backgrounds as Honeywell employees and users of the Experion system). A system was devised of holding slow-changing and expensive parameters (alarm limits, ranges) in memory, implemented as a COM object hosted in a Windows service.

The caching service learned the required parameters over time. The Experion API was used to acquire current values behind the scenes, and hold them ready as required by the graphics. The system supported the "aging-out" of old values, and also pseudo-parameters required by the screens that were not supported by the underlying Experion server. The graphics were rewritten to request the slow-changing parameters out of local memory, rather than across the network (and in many cases, down to the control layer).

The net results was a tenfold improvement in graphic callup time, enabling the project to meet the performance specification of the project.