IEC 61158-6-8:2007 provides common elements for basic time-critical and non-time-critical messaging communications between application programs in an automation environment and material specific to Type 8 fieldbus. It specifies interactions between remote applications and defines the externally visible behavior provided by the Type 8 fieldbus application layer. It defines the protocol provided to: define the wire-representation of the service primitives defined in IEC 61158 5-8, and define the externally visible behavior associated with their transfer. It specifies the protocol of the Type 8 fieldbus application layer, in conformance with the OSI Basic Reference Model (ISO/IEC 7498) and the OSI application layer structure (ISO/IEC 9545). This first edition and its companion parts of the IEC 61158-6 subseries cancel and replace IEC 61158-6:2003 and constitutes a technical revision. It includes the following significant changes from the previous edition:
- deletion of the former Type 6 fieldbus for lack of market relevance;
- addition of new types of fieldbuses;
- partition of part 6 of the third edition into multiple parts. This bilingual version corresponds to the monolingual English version, published in 2007-12.