Transaction Safe Field Devices Base of System Wide Data Consistency

Parallel accesses to the data of a field device by more than one user, e.g. a programmable controller and a commissioning tool, may cause inconsistencies, which may result in a functional misbehavior of the overall (automation) system. The solution to this problem must start within the field device. It is proposed here to integrate a transaction manager directly into the field device. The transaction manager controls all internal and external accesses to the field device data and ensures the data consistency within the device. These transaction safe field devices are the necessary base for an (automation) system wide data consistency.