The EdgeOps™ RTE follows a data-centric architecture approach. At the heart of it, there is a cognitive data base. It contains the current industrial-related variables (current values of variables, select historical data). The variables are structured using so-called topics. Each topic contains meta-information on structure, syntax, units and value ranges. The collection of all topics is made available in a data dictionary.
Figure 1: Data-centric RTE architecture
EdgeOps™ is a distributed system formed of DCEs (distributed control environments) and gateways. The DCEs are the hosts for EdgeOps™ applications. Gateways serve for including sensors and actuators on ETH or USB lines into the EdgeOps™ system. Although the EdgeOps™ data base is physically distributed over the nodes of the EdgeOps™ system, it is a single logical data store that holds variables of the whole distributed system.
