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1 Business Overview

FlowCal is a software tool used in Natural Gas and Petroleum companies for measurement and data management of gas and petroleum liquids. In Energy industry, Volume and energy data are key information. Field devices (meters) measures and send information like volume, pressure to Automation Systems. From Automation Systems this information flows to FlowCal. A sample is collected periodically from the field devices and sent to Labs for analysis .The Labs send this analysis information to FlowCal. FlowCal validates, recalculates/rollups, stores and reports measurement data coming from these Automation systems and Labs. This recalculated or rolled up data is used by other systems for various purposes such as generating financial reports.

Figure FlowCal Overview

2 Technical Overview

FlowCal provides a thick client based UI to access its functionalities. It uses Relational database like Oracle to store data. In this document we will use Oracle to refer a Database.
Pre-requisites for FlowCal installation –
Install Oracle Server
Install Oracle Client on the system where FlowCal is being installed
After FlowCal software is installed, several scripts need to be run manually to create system tables and insert mandatory data.
FlowCal stores its data in various tables. A meter is a parent entity in FlowCal. All data (volume, pressure, temperature, gas quality data etc) corresponds to a meter. Data can be stored at Periodic, Hourly, Daily and Monthly levels.
FlowCal provides several inbuilt services (these are disabled by default and needs to be enabled manually based on requirement) to manage data.. Services directly connect and update the database and are not dependent on FlowCal UI. Each service performs specific task like roll up, import, closing of meter etc.

Figure FlowCal Architecture
3 Features of FlowCal
3.1 Creation/Deletion and Edit of Meters/Gq Sources:
Meter: Corresponding to the every Field meters, users can create meters and fill in the meter details like Meter Number, Name and City using FlowCal. Users can also edit or delete the meters.
GQ Sources: Sample of the Gas is taken from the field periodically and is examined in the lab for content and composition of the gas. This is known as Gas Analysis Data. This data is then feed to GQ source.GQ sources can be mapped to meters.
After the meters and GQ sources are created, any import method (Refer: Import Section) can be used to import Volume and Gas Analysis data in FlowCal. Import path has to be configured for each instance of FlowCal/ List/ Meter. For specific formats FlowCal has specific folders. All these Folders are subfolders under the configured folder.
Folder Location
Description
MeterTextFiles
To import volume data in text file format
GQSOURCETEXTFILESBYIMPORTID
To import GQ data when data is imported using import id functionality in text file format
GqSourceTextFiles
Importing GQ data without import id in text file format
Table Folder Location for Import files
3.2 Lists:
Lists are of two types: Meter List and GQ Sources List. Lists can be created based on the user requirement. List is very useful while performing operations like ‘purging of data’, ’setup of import path’, ’configuration of set points’. These operations can be performed directly on the list. For e.g. Instead of purging of meter data individually, purging can be done in one shot using the list option in purging data functionality. This will purge the meter data for all the meters included in the selected list.
3.3 Import/Export:
FlowCal can be configured to automatically import data from a specific location. On import, the imported data is filtered by Flow Cal’s extensive validation set, flagging any suspect or missing data.
By default, FlowCal supports importing .CFX and .txt