Commenting on the new members in the March edition of FDT Newsletter, FDT board chairman Hartmut Wallraf said: "With Shell, Saudi Aramco and Chevron already members, Petronas further strengthens the recognition and acceptance of FDT in the oil and gas market. Considering that this is one of the most active automation markets worldwide, FDT technology is poised to further seize this opportunity."

Milestone

In the same issue, Wallraf also announced that FDT specification has reached a major milestone: "The most important target of the FDT Group is to provide the FDT specification as an open and freely available international standard for the benefit of end users worldwide. The FDT Group has now made one further big step towards achieving this goal."

In the International Electrical Commission (IEC) process for approval of international standards, all parts of the FDT standard are issued for vote among 19 countries worldwide as a committee draft for vote (CDV).

Style guide

The related working group, IEC SC65E WG4, has managed to satisfy two of the most requested requirements by end users: first, the separation of FDT technology into a platform independent part and the mapping on Microsoft technology into a technical description; second, the addition of a style guide description for DTMs.

"The voting period ends in August 2008 and the FDT Group is very confident that the overall vote will be positive.

The FDT Group continues its activities to bring the system providers and the device manufacturers together in order to provide end users with integrated solutions right out of the box," noted Wallraf.

Since November 2007, 22 FDT Group member companies have participated in a project at the facility of Dietz Automation in Neukirchen, Germany.

The project is intended to test the interoperability of the FDT/DTM technology in a very diverse setting.

The test system setup includes many products from different vendors; seven frames (systems or engineering tools) from five vendors, 21 devices with DTMs from 13 vendors, and six communication DTMs from four vendors.

he system currently uses the most familiar digital protocols; PROFIBUS, HART, and FOUNDATION fieldbus. By checking
the interactions between these systems and devices, the interoperability tests weed out the common problems and offer the end user maximum assurance for a problem free implementation of
their FDT/DTM applications in their automation projects.

As a precondition to test participation, all DTMs had to be certified through the FDT group certification process. During the preparation phases, participants had the opportunity to perform the tests on their own.

Additionally, while setting up the test, a test procedure was developed for the frames. This will be the base for the future frame certification procedure. During the project start-up, all the frames involved in this test passed the frame test procedure and were smoothly integrated in the system. The test phase started in February and is scheduled to be completed in May.

"As an exciting side benefit, some of the companies accessed the test system via internet and tested their DTMs on-line, further challenging their DTM tools and frames with this very diverse test environment. This proved to be an advantage to companies located in North America and/or Asia.

The FDT Group intends to turn this test system into a permanent test and certification facility and to make it a part of the FDT certification process," added Wallraf.

Achim Laubenstein, vice president of technology, declared: "This test facility further completes the FDT certification procedure. Besides the DTM certification, we will have shortly a frame certification procedure and a permanent interoperability test bed. This will ensure maximum robustness for the FDT certified products and provide end users the insurance of smooth project implementation."

Another recent development is the launch of the dtmINSPECTOR, a software tool which automatically and systematically tests the conformance of DTMs with the FDT specification. All DTMs, such as communication-, device and gateway-DTMs, can be tested with this tool.

It gives the DTM manufacturer the best possible development support and ensures a speedy and trouble-free certification of the DTMs.

By using dtmINSPECTOR through the DTM development process, the developer picks up right away the differences between the developing software and the FDT specification.

It is possible to debug the DTM during the test run for the direct monitoring of the code interaction. This speeds up troubleshooting and significantly decreases the cost of error correction – early detection of errors leads to lower costs for bug fixing.

In the same way, the DTM certification test becomes a formality. The certification tests in the accredited test sites are also executed with the dtmINSPECTOR.

The developer can thus check the software conformance prior to shipping it to the test site, thereby ensuring successful testing at the first execution and avoiding costly repetitions of the process.

The importance of DTM certification is also emphasised by the NAMURAK2.6 workgroup on fieldbus. In its recommendation paper NE105, NAMUR demands the certification of all DTMs.

Test tool

Meanwhile, the FDT Group has now decided to establish the test and certification procedure for frame applications.

The development of a frame test tool – frameINSPECTOR – has started and is expected to be completed this summer. This test tool, similar to dtmINSPECTOR, will check the FDT frames for conformance against FDT Specification.

As with dtmINSPECTOR, frameINSPECTOR will be based on test scripts defined by the FDT Group. The development and maintenance of frameINSPECTOR will be done by M&M Software which is already providing the official DTM certification tool dtmINSPECTOR.