An Introduction to ISO 15926 November 2011 - iRINGToday

Development of Enabling Infrastructure
One aspect of information exchanges, as envisioned by ISO 15926, is that the definitions of
terminology be publicly accessible in real time during the exchange. This will allow the participants
to validate terms, which will remove ambiguity and reduce costs. Until now this has not
been possible for production work due to lack of facilities. The Joint Operational Reference
Data (JORD) project is developing the infrastructure and funding to bring a public reference
data service (RDS) into operation. It builds on several years of experience in operating an RDS
that supported standards development work.
We have used dictionary-level information exchange for years using ISO 15926 Part 4. This
works well in high-value situations that can afford the brute-force approach of understanding
equivalent information objects on each side of the transaction and mapping them together.
But with the pace of business increasing we need to be able to exchange information easier
without having to do so much preparation. To do this we will have to use the full specification
of ISO 15926. The iRING user group is developing tools, available free of charge with an
open-source license, to implement ISO 15926 parts 7, 8, and 9. The tools will more or less clip
on to the side of commercial software to allow information exchange between any similarly
equipped software.
Continued Development of Standards
The Geometry Special Interest Group (Geometry SIG) of Fiatech and PCA is developing a
reference library for the geometrical shapes used in 3D modeling software. Current tools for
exchanging graphics strip out all of the meaning. (This means we can exchange the surfaces
of plant objects but not their identity.) The geometrical reference library will be issued as ISO
15926 Part 3, which will allow us to exchange graphics as easily as we exchange other data.
One barrier to the wide use of ISO 15926 is that best practices for using Part 7 templates are
not yet common knowledge. The Instrument Special Interest Group (Instrument SIG) of Fiatech
and PCA is creating recommended templates for describing industrial instrumentation.
Because the management of instrumentation is crucial for the safe and profitable control of a
plant, the Instrument SIG is working closely with the O&M SIG.
Many information standards exist today for various niches in heavy industry. Two such standards
have recently been harmonized with ISO 15926. Under the guidance of Fiatech’s Engineered
Equipment Life Cycle Application Tools project (EELCAT), what is known as the AEX XML
schema (developed by another Fiatech project, Automated Equipment Information Exchange)
and the Hydraulic Institute’s Standard HI 50.7-2010 for Electronic Data Exchange for Pumping
Equipment have been brought together. HI 50.7 is a dictionary of data fields from many wellknown
standards along with the AEX schema. The EELCAT project has recently examined the
two standards and has demonstrated how they can be further harmonized with ISO 15926.
Getting Started with ISO 15926
With any new technology, there is uncertainty about what can be realistically accomplished.
Implementing ISO 15926 is easily within reach of most organizations, probably without having
to hire additional staff. At the introductory level, implementing ISO 15926 is similar to traditional
methods of exporting information from one application and importing it into another.
INTRODUCTION
10