Getting Started with ISO 15926

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Contents

1. Abstract
2. Read the Primer
3. Appoint an "Information Czar" (or Czarina)
4. Map your System Landscape
5. Develop a Business Case
6. Develop a Business Case
7. Develop a Plan
8. Look at the Relationships
9. Decide Compliance Level

Abstract

[Enter abstract]

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Read the Primer

Develop a basic understanding of ISO 15926. Understand some key points:

• Using ISO 15926 you can exchange information with others without having to know anything at all about each other's data storage configuration.

• Information will be transferred directly from machine to machine without having to be rekeyed.

• The information will be transferred with high fideltiy. You no longer need human beings to review every piece of informaiton to make sure nothing is lost or added.

Appoint an "Information Czar" (or Czarina)

Information is one of your organization's most valuable assets. You probably already have leads for for your most important departments. For instance, engineering organizations have titles like "Principle Process Engineer", or "Lead Mechanical Engineer". Operating companies will have someone in charge of mainenance. You should also have someone in charge of managing your information.

This is not the same a "Chief Information Officer". The typical CIO nowadays is more interested in the hardware and infrastructure software than the content, whereas the "Information Czar" is only interested in the content.

Good attributes for the Information Czar:

• A background in your organization's business.
• A mindset that the "information asset" is worth as much as the "physical asset."
• The ability to diferentiate between a "physical object" and an "abstract object."
• A prior interest in databases and programming languages.

Map your System Landscape

You will need to know all the individual software applications your organization uses, where they get thier input from, and where their output goes. Your most important applictions will probably already be mapped together either with custom programing or commercial middleware. Map all of the manual information exchanges and automated information exchanges, even the ones that seem to be working properly.

Develop a Business Case

How you justify implementing ISO 15926 will depend on your actual system landscape. An obvious target is anywhere you manually rekey information.

Develop a Business Case

There are a number of potential justifications, but all involve moving information from one data store to another:

• Saving Money - For instance, if you have to repeatedly map one application to other applications. If you use ISO 15926 you only have to map it once more.

• Saving Time - For instance, if you repeatedly have to map applications to other, external, applications in a short period of time. If you map to ISO 15926, the application will be ready to exchange information with any other ISO 15926-compliant application.

• Interoperability of Internal Applications - For instance, if your organizations run many proprietary applications that have to talk to each other, instead of mapping each of them together one pair at a time, map each to ISO 15926.

• Experience - For instance, if you anticipate having to implement ISO 15926 for many of our proprietary applications but don't know enough to make an accurate estimate.

Develop a Plan

Pick a pair of applications that need to exchange information. It can be any two, but the first implementation will go smoother if the two applications smallish, and are internal to your organization.

If your existing staff are not sufficiently experienced (as is likely), identify which vendors and consultants can help you.

Compare the schema of the two applications to ISO 15926. That is, find out the database objects in both applications and list their properties.

For example, suppose you want to be able to extract information from a PDS project to a Purchasing application:

Application Name	Native Class Name	Native Properties	IS) 15926 Class Name	ISO 15926 Properties
PDS	Valve	Nominal Diameter
		Pressure
		Temperature
Purchasing App

This is not mapping, you are doing this to develop the scope and get into the RDL classes to see what is there. You may find that a class is not in the RDL, and that's OK. You will eventually have to extend the class, thereby contributing to the industry information asset.

Look at the Relationships

The next step is to look at the relationships coming from the objects. For instance, what is the relationship between a valve and a pipeline, or between an instrument and a pipeline?

Then step into ISO 15926-7 to see the closest template. Map your relationships to the standard relationships. As before, if you need to extend the relationship templates, that's OK.

Decide Compliance Level

• Yellow - Only uses reference to reference data

• Green - Only uses shortcut style of templates

• Blue - Uses Part 7, not 8

• Red - Uses Part 7 & 8

• Red+ - Uses Part 7, 8, & 9

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