The CANopen Markup Language­ Representing Fieldbus Data with XML

This paper presents the CANopen Markup Language (CoML). CoML is an XML application developed to rep­ resent Controller Area Network (CAN) fieldbus system and process data in a generic and platform independent man­ ner. Due to the intrinsic interch angeab ility of XML struc­ tured data, fieldbus data becomes accessible not only by dedicated CoML tools but also by a wide variety of com­ mon general purpose XML tools like XML editors or XML databases. Since XML documents are especially well suited to be deployed on the WWW; this approach also facilitates the convenient use of CoML information in a distributed client/server architecture. CoML documents are used to describe CAN device interfaces and CAN sys­ tem information, to hold CAN process data, and to config­ ure monitoring attributes and (remote) access privileges at the finest granularity. This paper also outlines some practical uses of CoML for fieldbus monitoring and remote fieldbus mana gement.