Patent ID: 7693585

Claim:
A system that provides data to an industrial control system, comprising a computer processor for executing the following software components, the system is recorded on a computer-readable medium and capable of execution by a computer, comprising: a packaging component associated with an industrial control device that receives data from a source and encapsulates the data to package properties and methods relating to the data as one or more data objects, wherein the packaging component supports object oriented access to the data with at least one level of a particular control architecture; a data consuming device located in an industrial control network that employs an interface to access a selected data object from one of the encapsulated data objects and then directly reads, or writes properties and invokes methods of controller-based data objects; and an abstraction component that receives data from at least one source that is located within a particular control architecture and determines the properties and methods that are exposed to a particular data consuming device, wherein the data employs various formatting and includes self-describing information that relates to how such data can be employed, source of the data and scale of the data.