When you work in industrial automation, one of the most important parts of it is a graphic terminal. Be it HMI or SCADA, graphics a very integral part of the automation, because it is where the operator will work day and night to use the system.
Out of HMI and SCADA, SCADA is a very high-end graphic system. Not only screens, but you get reports, audit trails, connectivity with servers, and other high-level data integrity features.
Nowadays, SCADA programming is a very demanding job among engineers, as it needs a good level of scripting knowledge, networking knowledge, and IoT knowledge. Because Industry 4.0 is the future of industrial automation, SCADA plays a very important role in it.
So, the candidates who apply for SCADA jobs must know which questions to expect normally during interviews. In this post, we will learn the most asked questions on SCADA.
Before going to the questions, you can watch the below video to learn the SCADA programming software.
Yes. Though SCADA and PLC both work in tandem to show appropriate data to the user, a SCADA system can work without a PLC too. For that, connectivity must be established between SCADA and database or communication sensors. The architecture for this is quite complex and you have to be technically sound to establish proper communication.
The most used SCADA systems are Ignition SCADA, VT SCADA, Rockwell Automation (Factory Talk Site Edition – RS View), Aveva Edge, WinCC, Wonderware, Cimplicity, Litmus Edge, and Citect Studio.
Both are graphic systems, but they have a major difference in terms of functionalities. It is difficult or sometimes not possible to integrate features like data acquisition, historian, complex networking, database connectivity, audit trail, report generation, compatibility with ERP / MES / cloud computing, or other types of complex data management systems with HMI. But a SCADA will do this job easily because it is designed for this majorly.
There are two types of licenses in SCADA – hard key and soft key. Hard key uses some external means like a pen drive or other communication port of a PC to tell the system that the license has been connected. In soft key, you have to enter a code via network or offline, which the PC remembers for licensing.
As the name implies, there are two SCADA systems in redundancy – primary and standby. If a primary SCADA system fails, the standby SCADA immediately takes over and all the internal servers like alarms, trends, reports, and other data are automatically shown in it.
They both are dependent on server SCADA to run, but the major difference is that in the control client, you can control the screen operation; whereas in view only client, you can only view the screens and not operate them.
The following methods can be used for cyber-security – updating SCADA software when any new patch comes from the manufacturer, updating Windows security patches frequently, hard security programming in the SCADA program, detecting unwanted network configurations and removing them from the program, disabling USB and other ports, performing in-house technical audits, and hiring trained professionals for intrusion detection and management.
A historian is a software that is used only with SCADA systems. It collects events, and data and logs them into a database for further use. The historical database is configured automatically to match the number of tags logging data to it.
Yes, SCADA is sold based on tag counts. For example, a SCADA package vendor will have three types of tags – 4000, 10000, or 20000. In such cases, a programmer has to design the system accordingly otherwise the SCADA will not run.
Object-oriented tools and graphics are a very powerful way to design screens. You can easily align, draw, manipulate, rotate, and fill colors automatically in an object, without much intervention and loss of time.
In this way, we saw some most asked questions on SCADA systems.
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