TABLE OF CONTENTS In this final chapter we will review how the IEC 61499 standard is likely to develop in the future and its possible impact on the design of systems and support tools.
This chapter will review:
current limitations of part 1 of the IEC 61499 standard
proposals for IEC 61499 part 2 that covers Engineering Task Support
requirements of a standard file exchange format for porting
future developments.
We have now covered the main concepts defined in the first part of the IEC 61499 Function Block standard. This book has focused more on providing an overview and showing how the standard can be applied rather than exploring some of the more complex details within formal definitions. One area, which has not been explored in any great detail, has been the textual syntax that is defined within Part 1.
The textual syntax is defined formally in terms of production rules that can be used by compiler writers to build software tools for processing function block designs. This is an important feature of the standard because it means that designs that are produced graphically can be stored in a textual form that is portable to different support tools. It should be emphasised that all function block type specifications, applications and subapplications have two equivalent forms. They can be defined either graphically, which has been the main form used in this book, or they can be defined in a concise textual form. Tools are already being developed that...
