Patent ID: 8429251

Claim:
A method for consistent provision of configuration data in an industrial automation system comprising a plurality of networked control units, comprising: providing functions of the industrial automation system by services from each of said plural networked control units; combining components by a local service configuration unit of said plural control units using a standard configuration interface to form a service; configuring the service by configuration data and activating the service, the configuration data comprising information relating to an attribution of the services to the plural networked control units and to dependencies between the services of each of said plural control units; accepting the configuration data from a control and monitoring unit in the industrial automation system by a system configuration service, checking the accepted configuration data and transmitting the checked configuration data to destination control units of said plural networked control units; checking the transmitted configuration data by local service configuration units associated with the destination control units for changes in comparison with previously used configuration data; utilizing the detected changes in the configuration data at the local service configuration units to ascertain lists of operations for performing configuration changes, the lists being optimized to minimize service downtimes; and at least one of performing and prompting the ascertained lists of operations to accept configuration changes for local services; wherein the service comprises a local service and activating the local service comprises: loading the configuration data in a preparation phase and providing the local service in a finishing phase using the configuration data loaded in the preparation phase; and providing the local service in a reset phase using configuration data associated with a last error-free status upon failure of at least one of the preparation phase and finishing phase.