Software Architecture

Rapid SCADA software has a multi-tier architecture. Applications (services) included in the software interact with each other using the TCP protocol. Figure 1 shows a commonly used architecture for a simple system that is deployed in the default installation. Figure 2 shows a distributed architecture in which different services are deployed on separate hosts.

Default architecture
Figure. 1. Default architecture
Distributed architecture
Figure. 2. Distributed architecture

Rapid SCADA includes the following main applications:

  1. Webstation is a web application that displays information to a dispatcher via a browser in tabular form, on diagrams and graphs, and also generates reports.
  2. Server manages the data archives, performs mathematical calculations and provides information to the client applications.
  3. Communicator collects data from controllers, diagnoses devices, and transmits information to the Server application over the network.

Note that Rapid SCADA supports architecture options in which instances of the Server application exchange data with each other for the purpose of redundancy.