Every day the technical systems of the Fernwarme Zurich (FWZ) generate large quantities of measurement data. The FWZ wants to collect and store this data for statistical purposes.

The measurement data elements have to be tested, corrected and saved in the database. The database should be open and flexibly accessible from the higher software layers. The interface for the input data should be compatible with different data formats in order to be flexible for future enhancements. The main objective of this project is to present different solutions for this problem and to demonstrate the feasibility with a prototype.

We studied the system environment including the process control system InTouch. After analyzing the interfaces for getting the data and the data formats of the measurement data, we studied the options for a suitable method for storing the data in the database. We developed a prototype which collects data from a source, checks this data to ensure its plausibility, performs corrections if required and stores the data in the database.

Our prototype, the DataCollector version 1.0, offers two interfaces for incoming data. One interface is used for the files provided by InTouch and the other is an XML-interface. First the DataCollector reads the data through one of these interfaces and stores it temporarily in the database. In a second step the plausibility tests and corrections are performed. The database management system has to be capable of managing large quantities of measurement data.

We used MS SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition as DBMS and the prototype is programmed in Java.