Server-side scripting is an easy-to-use, extremely powerful option to extend the functionality of your mySCADA system. Server-side scripting uses JavaScript as a primary language for writing scripts, which is one of the simplest, straightforward, versatile, and effective scripting languages. It is relatively easy to learn since it uses syntaxes close to English. In addition, you can find a lot of resources and JavaScript libraries on the web – one of the main reasons why JavaScript has been chosen for server-side scripting on the mySCADA platform.
The execution of JavaScript is based on the excellent V8 library from Google, which is now the fastest JavaScript engine available. Rather than interpreting JavaScript, as the old engines used to do, V8 uses the Just-In-Time compiler to produce and execute native instructions tailored to a processor on which the application is running. The generated instructions are cached, avoiding the overhead of repeated code generation and deleted if no longer needed.
For networking and advanced functionalities, mySCADA server-side scripts use the NODE.JS toolbox for building fast and scalable network applications. NODE.JS uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications.
What can you achieve with mySCADA server-side scripting?
- process and analyze the PLC data
- compute statistical data
- create reports and serve them over a web server to a client
- implement complex alarming
- communicate with devices over Ethernet or Serial line
- implement own protocols for specialty devices