Lenze PLC Designer PLC Designer (R3-1) - Manual (Page 221)

L-force | PLC Designer
Source Control
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DMS 4.1 EN 03/2011 TD29 219
10 Source Control
10.1 Source Control via ENI
General
The objects of a PLC Designer project can be managed via the ENI (Engineering
Interface) in an external data base. The usage of such an data base guarantees the
consistency of the data, which then can be shared by several users, projects and
programs. Also it extends the PLC Designer functionality by making possible the
following items:
• Revision control for project objects: If an object has been checked out from the
data base, modified and checked in again, then in the data base a new version of
the object will be created, but the older versions will be kept also and can be called
again on demand. For each object and for a whole project the version history will
be logged. Two versions can be checked for differences.
• Multi-User Operation: The latest version of a sample of objects, for example of
POUs of a project, can be made accessible for a group of users. Then the objects
which are currently checked out by one of the users will be marked as "in the
works" and not editable by the other users. Thus several users can work in parallel
on the same project without risking to overwrite versions mutually.
• Access by external tools: Besides the PLC Designer programming system also other
tools, which also have an ENI, can access the common data base. Those might be
for example external visualizations, ECAD systems etc., which need the data
created in PLC Designer or which also produce data which are needed by other
programs.
ENI (Engineering Interface)
The ENI is an interface component which allows to connect the PLC Designer
programming system to an external data base.
The ENI is composed of a client and a server part. So it is possible to hold the data base
on a remote computer, which is required for multi-user operation. The PLC Designer
programming system is a client of the independent ENI Server Process as well as
another application, which needs access to the data base, might be such a client.
The ENI supports data base systems like for example 'Visual SourceSafe 6.0', as well as
a local file system. For the currently supported data base systems as well as for
detailed information on the ENI Server please see the separate ENI Server
documentation. Objects can be stored in different locations of the data base. They can
be checked out for editing and thereby will get locked for other users. The latest
version of an object can be called from the data base. Further on in parallel you can
store any objects just locally in the project as usual for projects without source control.