Patent ID: 8615313

Claim:
A networked computer including a computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for a sequence of events management facility for a process control environment, the sequence of events management facility comprising: an event data interface for receiving timestamped event data originating from a digital field control process input and provided to the sequence of events management facility via a network communications link, said event data being timestamped by a timestamp clock synchronized with other clocks within a process control system, wherein the timestamp clock applies timestamps with a substantially small granularity to the event data; and a sequence of events server comprising: a process database for storing an archival copy of the received timestamped event data, an event buffer, interposed between the event data interface and the process database, for temporarily storing the event data received from the event data interface prior to storing the event data in the process database, a debounce filter for holding the received timestamped event for a specified debounce period to stabilize the event data prior to reporting the timestamped event data in chronological order to a pre-sort buffer, a pre-sort buffer, interposed between the debounce filter and the event buffer, for delaying the storage of event data in the event buffer for a specified delay period before reporting the event data in chronological order to the event buffer, the specified delay period being longer than a longest specified debounce period of the debounce filter, and an event data client application interface providing access by sequence of events client applications to the timestamped event data received by the sequence of events management facility, thereby providing user access to sequence of event data based upon timestamped event data originating from the process control system.