The Fieldbus Foundation (www.fieldbus.org) announced its support for an ISA committee creating a harmonized version of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61804-3 international standard on Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL). The ISA SP104 committee will republish the IEC standard as an American National Standard Institute (ANSI, www.ansi.org) standard.
EDDL is a text-based language for describing the digital communication characteristics of intelligent devices and equipment parameters in an Operating System (OS) and Human Machine Interface (HMI)-neutral environment. EDDL enables a host system manufacturer to create a single engineering environment that eliminates the need for custom software drivers for each device type.
The ISA SP104 committee will create a national standard adopting the generic language specified by IEC 61804 to describe the properties of automation system components. The specified language is capable of describing device parameters and their dependencies, device functions, graphical representations, and interactions with control devices.
