A project contains members (5-8 persons) in three different locations and time zones. We did the following test:
Problem one – Concurrent users change and save SIGlobals
1. Two persons (A and B) opened iFix and Project_SIGlobals.
2. Person A makes a change to a form located in Project_SIGlobals.
3. Person A saves the changes and close iFix.
4. Person B save his work and close iFix.
5. The result is that the changes made by person A are now lost.
Question 1:
Does any anyone have a guide, some experience or hopefully a version control tool, which prevents/limit iFix developers from stepping on each other’s those? As a minimum we hope it’s possible to change a setting in iFix which informs the developer about the concurrency violation.
Problem two – Same situation as problem one, but in this case a faceplate is opened.
1. Two persons (A and B) opened iFix and the MyFaceplate_fp.
2. Person A makes a change to a form located in MyFaceplate_fp.
5. The changes made by person A is now lost.
Question 2:
Since the faceplates are located in separate files it might be possible to install an of the shell source code control software. Has anyone tried to use a source control software when working with iFix. How does other teams solves this issue ?
Regards
Geir Falkevik
Question 1: answer ?
DeltaV Version Control (VCAT) helps you manage configuration and user security changes by retaining previous versions of the configuration and security items. Version Control enables you to see who made changes and the reason given for any changes made. It allows you to restore previous versions of items or entire databases, to archive Version Control databases, restore archives, and clean up the database after restoring items. When enabled, Version Control affects all of the configuration items that you add, edit, or delete using DeltaV Explorer, Control Studio, Recipe Studio, I/O Configuration, and System Alarm Management (SAM), and all of the security items that you add, edit, or delete using DeltaV User Manager.
In addition, you can enable Version Control for DeltaV Displays. Version Control for DeltaV Displays requires DeltaV Version Control be enabled. That is, Version Control for DeltaV Displays cannot be enabled alone. Setting up, enabling and disabling, preferences, and the functions and locks options that are set for DeltaV Version Control apply to Version Control for DeltaV Displays. No additional configuration is required. However, there are some behavioral differences between Version Control's management of configuration items and its management of graphic and schedule files. Refer to Version Control for DeltaV Operate Displays for more information.
You can also enable Version Control for documents to manage changes for other types of files, for example, plant standard operating procedures, instrumentation diagrams, and so on. VCAT for documents can store any type of file. To enable VCAT for documents, Version Control or Version Control for DeltaV SIS must be enabled. That is, Version Control for documents cannot be enabled alone. Setting up, enabling and disabling, preferences, and the functions and locks options that are set for DeltaV Version Control apply to Version Control for documents. No additional configuration is required. However, there are some behavioral differences between Version Control's management of configuration items and its management of documents and other files. Refer to Version Control for Documents for more information.
When you enable Version Control, the DeltaV system creates a Version Control database and populates it with the items in your current configuration database. Once you have established the Version Control database and Version Control is enabled, you can see configuration changes by comparing versions of items in the Version Control database with the items in the configuration database
The master-database is always located in the Proplus, if you open the same file from different places and save them at the same location, it´s apparent that the file will be overwritten. If you make changes on workstation, then when you download the station it will check for differences in the project files and ask you to upload or overwrite the file.
Niklas Flykt
Klinkmann Oy
Key Account Manager safety products
nikfly@gmail.com