IEC 61970-404:2007

IEC 61970-404
Edition 1.0 2007-08
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) –
Part 404: High Speed Data Access (HSDA)

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, no part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and microfilm, without permission in writing from
either IEC or IEC's member National Committee in the country of the requester.
If you have any questions about IEC copyright or have an enquiry about obtaining additional rights to this publication,

please contact the address below or your local IEC member National Committee for further information.

IEC Central Office
3, rue de Varembé
CH-1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Email: inmail@iec.ch
Web: www.iec.ch
About the IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the leading global organization that prepares and publishes
International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies.

About IEC publications
The technical content of IEC publications is kept under constant review by the IEC. Please make sure that you have the
latest edition, a corrigenda or an amendment might have been published.
ƒ Catalogue of IEC publications: www.iec.ch/searchpub
The IEC on-line Catalogue enables you to search by a variety of criteria (reference number, text, technical committee,…).
It also gives information on projects, withdrawn and replaced publications.
ƒ IEC Just Published: www.iec.ch/online_news/justpub
Stay up to date on all new IEC publications. Just Published details twice a month all new publications released. Available
on-line and also by email.
ƒ Electropedia: www.electropedia.org
The world's leading online dictionary of electronic and electrical terms containing more than 20 000 terms and definitions
in English and French, with equivalent terms in additional languages. Also known as the International Electrotechnical
Vocabulary online.
ƒ Customer Service Centre: www.iec.ch/webstore/custserv
If you wish to give us your feedback on this publication or need further assistance, please visit the Customer Service
Centre FAQ or contact us:
Email: csc@iec.ch
Tel.: +41 22 919 02 11
Fax: +41 22 919 03 00
IEC 61970-404
Edition 1.0 2007-08
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) –
Part 404: High Speed Data Access (HSDA)

INTERNATIONAL
ELECTROTECHNICAL
COMMISSION
PRICE CODE
S
ICS 33.200 ISBN 2-8318-9251-1
– 2 – 61970-404 © IEC:2007(E)
CONTENTS
FOREWORD.3

INTRODUCTION.5

1 Scope.6

2 Normative references .7

3 Terms, definitions and identification conventions .7

3.1 Terms and definitions .7

3.2 Conventions .7
4 CIS Specification.7
4.1 Background (informative) .7
4.2 SCADA use case (informative) .8
4.3 Data model (normative) .9
4.4 Messages (normative) .12
4.5 Interface (normative) .12
4.5.1 Objects and interfaces.12
4.5.2 Server and session interfaces.15
4.5.3 Browse interfaces.16
4.5.4 Group management interfaces.16
4.5.5 IO interfaces.17
4.5.6 Client interfaces .17
4.6 Mapping of HSDA (normative) .17

Annex A (informative) Details on SCADA use case .20

Figure 1 – Control system structure .8
Figure 2 – Data subscription .9
Figure 3 – DAIS Data Access Data Model .10
Figure 4 – Example HSDA Node and Item structure .12
Figure 5 – HSDA objects and interfaces.13
Figure 6 – Typical interaction between the HSDA objects .15
Figure A.1 – Example use cases.20

Figure A.2 – Example on/off command object .21
Figure A.3 – Command sequence .21

Table 1 – HSDA to IEC 61970-301 mapping .18

61970-404 © IEC:2007(E) – 3 –
INTERNATIONAL ELECTROTECHNICAL COMMISSION

_____________
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
APPLICATION PROGRAM INTERFACE (EMS-API) –

Part 404: High Speed Data Access (HSDA)

FOREWORD
1) The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising
all national electrotechnical committees (IEC National Committees). The object of IEC is to promote
international co-operation on all questions concerning standardization in the electrical and electronic fields. To
this end and in addition to other activities, IEC publishes International Standards, Technical Specifications,
Technical Reports, Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) and Guides (hereafter referred to as “IEC
Publication(s)”). Their preparation is entrusted to technical committees; any IEC National Committee interested
in the subject dealt with may participate in this preparatory work. International, governmental and non-
governmental organizations liaising with the IEC also participate in this preparation. IEC collaborates closely
with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in accordance with conditions determined by
agreement between the two organizations.
2) The formal decisions or agreements of IEC on technical matters express, as nearly as possible, an international
consensus of opinion on the relevant subjects since each technical committee has representation from all
interested IEC National Committees.
3) IEC Publications have the form of recommendations for international use and are accepted by IEC National
Committees in that sense. While all reasonable efforts are made to ensure that the technical content of IEC
Publications is accurate, IEC cannot be held responsible for the way in which they are used or for any
misinterpretation by any end user.
4) In order to promote international uniformity, IEC National Committees undertake to apply IEC Publications
transparently to the maximum extent possible in their national and regional publications. Any divergence
between any IEC Publication and the corresponding national or regional publication shall be clearly indicated in
the latter.
5) IEC provides no marking procedure to indicate its approval and cannot be rendered responsible for any
equipment declared to be in conformity with an IEC Publication.
6) All users should ensure that they have the latest edition of this publication.
7) No liability shall attach to IEC or its directors, employees, servants or agents including individual experts and
members of its technical committees and IEC National Committees for any personal injury, property damage or
other damage of any nature whatsoever, whether direct or indirect, or for costs (including legal fees) and
expenses arising out of the publication, use of, or reliance upon, this IEC Publication or any other IEC
Publications.
8) Attention is drawn to the Normative references cited in this publication. Use of the referenced publications is
indispensable for the correct application of this publication.
9) Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this IEC Publication may be the subject of
patent rights. IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
International Standard IEC 61970-404 has been prepared by IEC Technical Committee 57:
Power systems management and associated information exchange.
The text of this standard is based on the following documents:
FDIS Report on voting
57/887/FDIS 57/906/RVD
Full information on the voting for the approval of this standard can be found in the report on
voting indicated in the above table.
A list of all parts of the IEC 61970 series, under the general title Energy Management System
Application Program Interface (EMS-API), can be found on the IEC website.

– 4 – 61970-404 © IEC:2007(E)
The committee has decided that the contents of this publication will remain unchanged until

the maintenance result date indicated on the IEC web site under "http://webstore.iec.ch" in

the data related to the specific publication. At this date, the publication will be

• reconfirmed;
• withdrawn;
• replaced by a revised edition, or

• amended.
A bilingual version of this publication may be issued at a later date.

61970-404 © IEC:2007(E) – 5 –
INTRODUCTION
This part of IEC 61970 is part of the IEC 61970 series that defines Application Program

Interfaces (APIs) for an Energy Management System (EMS). The IEC 61970-4XX and

IEC 61970-5XX series documents comprise Component Interface Specifications (CISs). The

IEC 61970-4XX series CIS are specified as Platform Independent Models (PIMs), which

means they are independent of the underlying technology used to implement them. PIM

specifications are also referred to as Level 1 specifications. The IEC 61970-5XX series CIS,

on the other hand, are specified as Platform Specific Models (PSMs). PSM specifications are

also referred to as Level 2 specifications.

IEC 61970-4XX CISs specify the functional requirements for interfaces that a component (or
application) should implement to exchange information with other components (or
applications) and/or to access publicly available data in a standard way. The component
interfaces describe the specific event types and message contents that can be used by
applications for this purpose.
IEC 61970-404 specifies an interface for the efficient transfer of data in a distributed
environment. Small amounts of data are transferred with short delay but also large amounts of
data are transferred in short time but with possibly longer delay. This is a typical requirement
for a SCADA system that acts as a real time data provider to other sub-systems. Other
systems than SCADA may also benefit from the characteristics of HSDA. When short delay
times as well as bulk data transfer is required, HSDA is a good fit.
These component interface specifications refer to entity objects for the power system domain
that is defined in the IEC 61970-3XX series, including IEC 61970-301.

– 6 – 61970-404 © IEC:2007(E)
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
APPLICATION PROGRAM INTERFACE (EMS-API) –

Part 404: High Speed Data Access (HSDA)

1 Scope
The IEC 61970-404 High Speed Data Access (HSDA) specification specifies a generalized
interface for efficient exchange of data. The specification takes into account the latencies
caused by a Local Area Network (LAN) providing efficient data exchange also over Local Area
Networks.
IEC 61970-404 is derived from the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Acquisition from
Industrial Systems section Data Access (DAIS DA) specification. OMG DAIS DA relies on the
OMG Data Access Facility (DAF) and OPC Data Access (DA) specifications. OMG DAIS DA is
a Platform Specific Model (PSM) with CORBA as the platform and OPC DA is a PSM with
Microsoft COM as the platform. IEC 61970-404 describes the functionality of these PSMs in a
technology independent way (i.e., as a Platform Independent Model (PIM)). Hence it explains
the functionality to a level that can be used to create additional PSMs or act as an
introduction to existing PSMs, i.e. DAIS DA and OPC DA. Implementers wanting an
introduction to OMG DAIS DA and OPC DA shall read these documents.
The HSDA interface is intended to interoperate with other IEC 61970 based interfaces.
Hence, it is possible to use information retrieved from an other interface to access the same
information using this interface, for example:
• object identifiers,
• attribute names or identifiers,
• class names or identifiers.
Subclause 4.6 provides a generic mapping for the CIM classes and attributes.
The way data is organized in a server implementing the HSDA interface can be seen by using
the browse interfaces for data and meta data. It is also possible to use the data access
interface directly without using the bro
...