There is a potentially interesting standard many may not know - IEC 61499 - Standard for Distributed Automation, first ed 2005!!! and related to PLC type contro

There is a potentially interesting standard many may not know - IEC 61499 - Standard for Distributed Automation, first ed 2005!!! and related to PLC type controllers. It was meant to be the next step forward from IEC 61131 that described the five PLC control languages, but far ahead of it's time. 61499 introduced the concept of an executable specification, and went on develop tie ins with XML and OPC. The executable specification is a particularly interesting idea, effectively emerging as no code these days But two decades on is still only starting to get traction, seemingly because it was so far ahead of it's time, and the target audience was potentially mostly only just branching out into software because they were now programming ladder logic, instead of designing panel boards with hundred of relays and timers. But, it is worth a look for some ideas in the space, particularly the executable specification concept (you know this can only lead to a DSL of some kind), but also including their diagramming that looks a lot like UML but maybe works better, along with 4Diac software package, consideration of how some of the more esoteric aspects of OPC fit into all this, and more slightly obliquely, TLA+.