Top 15 SCADA interview Questions

1. What is SCADA?

SCADA stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition is a system that refers to a combination of telemetry and data acquisition.

SCADA is a real-time supervision, monitoring and information handling scheme. Components of SCADA include Master Station, Remote Station / Remote Terminal Unit and Telecommunications Media.

2. What are Features of SCADA software ?

SCADA’s popular characteristics include Dynamic Mimic Process, Trends, Alarm, Hardware Connection, Recipe Management, etc.

3. Who are the leading SCADA manufacturers?

• Invensys Wonderware InTouch
• Siemens WinCC (Earlier COROS)
• Allen Bradley RS View (Earlier Control View)
• Intellution iFix (Earlier Fix DMACS)
• GE Fanuc Simplicity

4. List various EXE files used in InTouch Software and there role

• InTouch : It’s a manager of the application. You can use this to build a fresh request. Moving between different apps.
• View: Windowviewer. This will start Runtime application. From this you can monitor and control the plant.
• WM: WM.XE is the manufacturer of windows. This will launch the InTouch development package. You can use this to create the application

5. What are the advantages of SCADA over other protocols?

SCADA enables users to generate object-oriented graphs, offering trending graphs for real-time information analysis.

SCADA also handles big data, allowing you to create a database system that shows trends over several years. This allows users to access important data that can be used for future growth.

6. What is DDE?

DDE is the acronym for dynamic data exchange. DDE provides a communication protocol that enables communication signals to be sent and received by machines. Microsoft created this protocol

7. What is RTU?

RTU is a remote terminal device in full form. The remote terminal devices connect the sensor to the process control and transform the sensor to digital data

8. How does SCADA handle data?

SCADA system collects information and sends it to a data processing central computer. Using the SCADA software, information is managed and displayed to the user. Also, SCADA logs information on who is running reports and the data being used.

9. At what voltage does an RTU operates?

110V/240V.

10. What are Trends?

Trends implies information graphic representation. To show graphical depictions of various tagnames over time, you can configure both trend items.

Real-time trends enable you to chart up to four pens (information values), while historical trends enable you to chart up to eight pens.

Trends in real time are dynamic. They are continually updated with whatever time span in setup during runtime. In order to see previous data, you can not scroll the real-time trends.

11. What types of Licensing patterns used in SCADA software?

There are two types of licenses are used, it is a hardware lock that can be placed on the PC’s communication port. Software lock: this is the licence for the software code. You can typically placed the code during setup or move the code from the floppy to the hard drive

12. What happens to alarm monitoring if the primary alarms serve fails?

The servers are mirrored and all functions are transparently transferred to the users or ongoing functions.

13. What happens to monitoring if the primary server fails?

No transmission to users is transparent and all functions are as usual

14. How to backup critical tasks such as plant floor I/O alarm and trends?

The redundant server mirrors all server functions. The system offers local information backups or storage with backup systems on a network client.

15. What is CIMPLICITY?

CIMPLICITY is a SCADA package. it is based on a client server architecture consisting of servers and viewers.
Data collection and distribution is the responsibility of servers.

sCSDAVewers connect to servers and have complete access to the information gathered to view and monitor actions