At ESCAPE 12, held in The Hague, The Netherlands, on May 27, 2002, Michel PONS, representing ATOFINA, a subsidiary of TOTAL, presented (PDF, 358 Kbytes) on the current status of the CAPE-OPEN standard. The presentation was prepared together with Jean-Pierre BELAUD from ENSIACET, Toulouse, France. This dissemination on CAPE-OPEN was part of the Global CAPE-OPEN Support project funded by the European Commission.
The presentation starts by re-stating the issue addressed by the development of the CAPE-OPEN standard: limited reusability of 3rd party models or software developments because of the lack of interoperability between process simulation software. CAPE-OPEN delivers seamless plug and play interoperability between process simulation software. Michel PONS used an animated slide to represent the numerous combinations of components and environments that are already possible.
Next Michel PONS gives an overview of the development timeline of CAPE-OPEN through the various projects that shaped the standard. While the CAPE-OPEN and Global CAPE-OPEN projects are now finished, CO-LaN is the organization set up to support CAPE-OPEN on the long term. The missions given to CO-LaN are listed.
Then comes a description of what makes up the CAPE-OPEN technology, how the various interface specifications defined are shaping up a complete standard and how the standard has progressively evolved.
What makes CAPE-OPEN a success is its implementation in already quite a few commercial tools. The Global CAPE-OPEN project sponsored the development of new CAPE-OPEN pieces of software and many combinations of CAPE-OPEN Process Modelling Components and CAPE-OPEN Process Modelling Environments are now possible.A list of these is provided.
Michel PONS concludes by stating the numerous benefits that CAPE-OPEN brings to providers and users of process simulation software as well as to academics active in the field.