Managing Applications

Applications are used to organize, package, deploy, and maintain SCADA/HMI system resources in Iotellect SCADA/HMI.

This article covers the application lifecycle, including creation, modification, packaging, deployment, updates, and rollbacks using Iotellect platform tools.

For guidance on how to start creating a SCADA/HMI application, see Getting Started.

Application management actions are available from two main entry points:

• The Application screen — a dedicated, task-oriented screen for common application actions, adding resources, packaging or exporting application data, rolling back deployed resources, and quick access to frequently used configuration tools.

• The Administration screen — The platform administration screen that contains the System Tree. Use it to access the Application context menu and perform platform-level actions such as Deploy, Update, and other context actions available for the selected Application.

The exact set of available actions may depend on the application state, user permissions, installed modules, and the current Iotellect version.

The Application screen provides quick access to frequently used application actions and common configuration tasks.

The toolbar contains common application management actions available from the Application screen. Depending on the application state, user permissions, and available modules, these actions may include configuring the application, rolling back deployed resources, removing the application, packing the Application with its resources, exporting/importing the Application context, and other available operations.

The main workspace provides grouped action buttons for common platform operations used when building and maintaining application resources. These actions are grouped by purpose:

• Connect — device connectivity, plugin management, OPC discovery, flexible driver configuration, model and class creation.

• Design — dashboard creation, media library access, and report creation.

• Maintain — alerts, scripts, scheduled jobs, event filters, event correlators, and related maintenance tasks.

• Manage — user management, authorization, and other management actions.

These grouped buttons are shortcuts to standard Iotellect platform tools. They do not replace the application lifecycle operations described in this section, but provide quick access to the most common configuration tasks used while building or maintaining an Application.

The Administration screen contains the platform System Tree.

Applications are listed under the Applications node. Use the Application context menu in the System Tree for platform-level actions that are not available directly from the Application screen.

The following guide explains how the Applications module can be used to manage resources as a "classic" SCADA project, and provides a comparison with how similar elements appear in a classic SCADA project.

The first step in organizing a new project is to create an Application context.

Applications can be created in several ways. For an overview of available starting points, see Getting Started. For guided creation, see Application Generation Wizard.

This section describes manual creation of an empty Application context.

To create an empty application manually, open the Applications screen and click Create. Select Start from Scratch at the bottom of the screen. Enter the application’s identifying information, including its Name and Description, following the context naming conventions. The Application Folder Path indicates the folder on the Iotellect where resources will be saved during the application packaging. Click OK to create the new application.

After the Application is created, you can add resources to it, configure its properties, and manage its lifecycle using the actions described in the following sections.

Once the application context has been created, its resources can be defined in different ways:

1. Editing the Resources property manually using standard Iotellect platform tools, as described in the Application Configuration.

2. Using the Add Resource button that is available from the Application screen toolbar.
   The Add Resource button is used to add existing system resources to the Application. Application resources may include devices, models, dashboards, alerts, reports, scripts, event filters, and other contexts that should be included in the application package and deployment lifecycle.

The Resources table lists all the resources which comprise the application. Click the Add Resource button on the toolbar of the Application screen to associate existing resources with the Application.

For each associated resource, configure the following properties as needed:

• Resource: Context path to the resource to be included in the application.

• Description: Textual description of the resource, which may be localized for multiple languages.

• Context Description: Textual description to apply to the context created during the application deployment.

• Category: String identifier to categorize the resource within the application's resource table.

• Subcategory: Additional identifier for categorizing resources.

• Group Name/Description: Defines a group to which the resource will be added during deployment.

• Version: An integer indicating the resource version.

• Dependencies: A table of resources upon which the current resource depends.

A SCADA system is composed of a number of different resources working together. These resources can be physical devices, such as sensors, controllers, and actuators. They can also be logical entities defined in software, such as tags, trends, alarms, and HMIs.

Iotellect provides a unified model for representing and managing these disparate resources, allowing for flexible and scalable SCADA implementations.

The following table lists typical SCADA resources and their Iotellect counterparts. Note that in several cases the name and general purpose of a resource are the same between traditional SCADA systems and Iotellect. However, the implementation and capabilities within Iotellect may offer additional advantages, such as enhanced data processing, visualization options, and flexible integration with other system components.

Use Pack when you need to package an Application together with its resources for backup, transfer, installation, or deployment on another Iotellect instance.

Use Export only when you need to export the Application context itself as a .prs file. The exported context does not include the resources listed in the Application.

The Pack action packages the Application and its resources. It provides several operation types:

• Save to Server Folder — saves the packaged Application and its resources to a folder on the Iotellect server file system.

  Download as ZIP Archive — downloads the packaged Application and its resources as a .zip archive.

• Download as JAR Archive — downloads the packaged Application as a .jar archive that can be used as Iotellect plugin package.

Use Save to Server Folder when the package should remain on the server, for example for backup, development workflow, or further processing by external tools.

The package includes the Application configuration and the resources included in the Application, such as Device, Model, Dashboard, Alerts, Event Filters, and other application resources. Each included resource is exported as a separate resource file.

In addition to the resources, a file application.properties contains properties of the application itself.

The resulting folder can be used for backup, migration, or further processing by external tools. It can also be added to an external version control system such as Git, Mercurial, or SVN for managing application development and deployments to multiple Iotellect environments.

Use Download as ZIP Archive when the package should be downloaded, transferred, stored, or imported into another Iotellect environment.

Use Download as JAR Archive when the Application should be distributed or installed as a plugin package on another Iotellect instance.

The Export action is available from the Application screen toolbar. The Export action exports only the Application context itself, without the resources included in the Application.

The exported context can be downloaded as a .prs file and later imported into another environment. Since this operation does not include the Application resources, it should not be used as a full application packaging or deployment mechanism.

For full application transfer or deployment, use Pack instead.

Once the application is packaged using one of the above methods, it can be deployed using the Deploy action. The Deploy action is available from the Application context menu in the Administration screen for Applications installed as plugin packages (such as Applications installed from a .jar archive).

If the Application is provided as a .zip archive or available in a server folder, it must be imported through the appropriate Application context action in the Administration screen before it can be used.

If the Application is provided as a .jar archive, install it as a plugin on the target Iotellect instance and restart the server if required. After that, the Application appears in the Applications list and can be deployed from its context menu in the Administration screen.

The Deploy action has the following parameters:

• Deployment User Mode: Defines the user that will own the resources created by Application deployment. Available options are Application owner, Current user, and Select custom user.

• Deployment User Context: Context of user that should own resources.

• Remove Orphans: If true, orphaned resources (that are not part of the current application but were part of a previous version) will be removed once the Application is deployed.

When deployed, the Deploy action creates or updates each resource defined in the Application based on the indicated properties.

The Update action is available from the Application context menu in the Administration screen.

The Update action can be used to modify or update resources associated with the application. Several parameters allow for fine-grain control over how the update will take place:

• Operation Type: Indicate the type of data source that will be used to update the application, either loading update data from an Application folder on the Iotellect server file system or uploading it as a .zip archive.

• Application Folder Path: Path to the application folder used as an update source.

• Handling Existing Contexts: Indicate the behavior for updating a context which already exists, either to Skip, Replace or Update the existing context.

• Error Handling: Defines how errors are handled during update, either by ignoring errors and continuing the update process, or by reverting the update if an error occurs.

• Delete Not Listed Contexts: Deletes contexts that are not listed in the updated Application, depending on update parameters.

The Rollback action is available from the Application screen toolbar when applicable.

Use the Rollback action when you need to remove resources that were created during Application deployment. For example, if an Application deployment created a Model, rolling back the Application removes that Model from the system tree.

The Application context itself is not removed by Rollback. Locally modified resources may also remain, depending on how they were changed after deployment.

If you need to remove or adjust only selected resources without rolling back the entire deployment, edit the Application resources and remove or delete the relevant contexts using standard Iotellect platform tools.

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