Importance

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Abstract

The present invention provides for an integrated plant environment which includes a business computing environment, such as an IBM environment, to run business programs that manage business aspects of the plant, a second, different computing environment, such as a DEC environment, configured to run manufacturing programs that control production of products, a gateway configured to allow communication between the business programs and the manufacturing programs, and an advanced program-to-program server which enables communication between the two different computing environments. The present invention also includes a method for interfacing programs in a first computing environment with programs in a second computing environment. The method consists of allocating a server process to a first program in one of the first and second computing environments, wherein the first program in turn requests a session with a second program in the other of the first and second computing environments, establishing a first session between said first program and said allocated server process, and establishing a second session between said second program and said allocated server process. The first and second sessions host a conversation between said first program and said second program.

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First Claim