Patent ID: 8050784

Claim:
A computer program providing a program variable reference for programming an industrial controller, the industrial controller executing a control program configured to communicate with a variety of devices and to control an industrial process, the computer program comprising: (a) a parser for reading an electronic data sheet containing a plurality of data associated with at least one of the devices, the data including a device identifier, a description of a function of the data, and a data type of the data, the parser extracting from the electronic data sheet the description and the data type identified to the device; (b) a mapper reading a memory map corresponding to the control program, the memory map including a plurality of starting addresses and a plurality of device identifiers corresponding to the starting addresses, wherein the mapper relates the device identifier from each data sheet to one of the device identifiers in the memory map; and (c) a reference generator receiving data from the parser and the mapper to create a programmer's reference including an augmented memory map further comprising: (i) the plurality of starting addresses; (ii) the plurality of device identifiers corresponding to the starting addresses; and (iii) the description and the data type from each data sheet corresponding to one of the device identifiers.