Patent ID: 8806467

Claim:
A field device management apparatus comprising: a personal computer operating with a MICROSOFT WINDOWS operating system (OS); and a communication unit connected to field devices through a communication path, the communication unit receiving device data of the field devices, wherein the personal computer includes a processor configured to provide: a plurality of component object model (COM) in-process servers, each of which acquires and manages the device data related to a corresponding one of the field devices; and a launch-program COM in-process server that stores a launch-program, the launch-program activating and closing an instance of a COM object in each of the plurality of COM in-process servers, the launch-program calling four different functions of “GetClassObject”, “CanUnloadNow”, “RegisterServer”, and “UnregisterServer” and preventing the four different functions from being executed directly by the OS in the plurality of COM in-process servers, and wherein the plurality of COM in-process servers are initialized on the MICROSOFT WINDOWS operating system to generate each instance of the COM object in respectively different memory spaces.