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In this article we describe the teaching of automation and informatics at the Faculty of Mining and Geology that primarily educates professionals in the field of geology and resource industries. Even in mining, the need for specializations in automation and IT has arisen in the past and, for this reason, these fields of study have been created. We also operate our branch office in Most, where part of the lessons is realized via videoconference, which has its plus and minus. We describe the problems we have with the lessons, deficiencies in study plans, and suggestions for further development. At the end of the paper, we present some of our research projects and areas of action - information systems for coal preparation plants, brownfields revitalization projects database, landscape modeling and visualization system, application of RFID technology, methane flow modeling or fault tolerant systems designing.

Every company and institution faces the necessity to manage its inventory. For high accuracy, security and easy operation of inventory management system it is necessary to have an easily recognizable identifier on all managed objects. The aim of our present project is to modernize the methods of automatic inventory management and asset protection with the help of the application of radio frequency identification technology (RFID hereinafter) to automatically identify the occurrence of marked objects. During the solutions we have to deal with many obstacles such as the bindings of data flowing from RFID system with internal information systems of asset owner companies. Appropriate choice of tags for individual subjects, their testing and readability experiments also have to be done. Another important part of the solution, that has to be developed in the project, is the system of reading gates. The gates are integrated in the door frames to allow automated identification of the objects brought in and out of the selected room. By modifying of mentioned solution we also introduce the design of a gatehouse that is able to prevent theft or unauthorized take away of material and equipment. In contrast, when the permitted items are taken away the system can easily generate the necessary forms to manage status of selected objects, decreasing the administrative burden. The result of the project is a solution consisting of information system and described hardware components for inventory management. The information system is possible to integrate with corporate ERP information systems. The pilot project was implemented and tested at VSB laboratories and we suppose deployment of the system in close future in cooperation with TINT Ltd. Company.

Technological processes in the raw material industry often operate continuously and requirements for high robustness and fail safe operation of the information and control systems are defined for them to fall into the fault-tolerant category. A critical element of fault-tolerant solutions ensures the continuity of data in databases. Data on the course of technological processes assume the nature he of a time series, and in the event of failure, can be attributed to a lack of data distortion in the calculation of trends, trailing averages and calculation balance evaluation. We tested the database mirroring technology in most common database systems (Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and InterSystems Cache) in the low-price Standard category. The paper elaborates on the results of our testing and provides recommendations as to the use of database mirroring technology in information system solutions for continuous production processes.

The article informs about best practices for the development of database of brownfield revitalization projects created based on experience in implementing database during the solution of the European Union project “COBRAMAN”. At the beginning there is a brief introduction into Cobraman project. Criteria that have a decisive influence on the data structure and also the recommendations for a user interface and for presentation of information are described. The article explains what should be done and what data must be available so that the developed database may form a starting structural element for modeling in the area of information systems for landscape restoration and for developing an expert system also. Expert system would be able, in accordance with the knowledge base and analogies with already realized successful as well as unsuccessful revitalization projects, recommend the most suitable project and solution for specialists and project managers concerned with revitalization projects.

The paper deals with fault tolerant information systems in raw material industry. Database is a heart of every information (control) system. To store the system in the category of fault tolerant (or disaster tolerant) systems, the goal is to solve the database continuity. Current database systems offer technology for online data mirroring. The paper brings details about solution of database mirroring using Microsoft SQL Server, with practical experiences on real projects.