Report from historians, databases and data loggers · 2020. 6. 23. · data sources. Historical...

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Report From Historians, Databases and Data Loggers

Overview All the major manufacturers of software in the automation industry provide high-powered historians meant to log tens of thousands of values at a very high frequency. XLReporter can report from all of these. However, there are many other data sources like text/csv files and relational databases and other data loggers that XLReporter treats like full blown historians. This document discusses how XLReporter reports from historical data sources.

Historical Data Sources XLReporter provides Historical data connectors to all the leading SCADA and HMI software manufacturers in industry such as Rockwell Automation, Emerson Automation Solutions, GE Digital, Aveva Wonderware, Siemens SIMATIC, Inductive Automation and Kepware. In addition, it also provides connectors for industry standards such as OPC HDA as well as OLE DB and ODBC for relational databases.

Historians Calculated Data Most historians not only provide raw values and text but also a set of calculations that can be performed at specific intervals over the time period.

For example the historian can return 15 minute averages, minimums and maximums of multiple tags over the day.

These calculations are performed by the historian and returned to XLReporter to report on. The available calculations vary from historian to historian so to find the list of available calculations as well as how they are produced, consult the documentation provided by the historian.


Time Series Databases A database table (or set of database tables) that has a timestamp column can be treated as a historian by XLReporter.

Schemas There are two distinct database table/view schemas that are supported.

Wide

A wide table or view is defined as having a column for the timestamp and a separate column for every data point (tag) recorded. For example, consider the following table:

DateAndTime Temperature Pressure Speed Flow

1/1/2020 00:00 63 38 30 16

1/1/2020 04:00 69 45 52 13

1/1/2020 08:00 90 22 51 22

1/1/2020 12:00 70 27 23 21

1/1/2020 16:00 90 44 57 9

1/1/2020 20:00 78 36 38 16

1/2/2020 00:00 81 45 43 11

This table contains a timestamp four data points: Temperature, Pressure, Speed and Flow.

Narrow

A narrow table or view is defined as having a column for the timestamp, one for the name of the data point (tag) and one for the data point value. For example, consider the following table:

DateAndTime Tag Value

1/20/2020 00:00 Temperature 63

1/20/2020 00:00 Pressure 38

1/20/2020 00:00 Speed 30

1/20/2020 00:00 Flow 16

1/20/2020 04:00 Temperature 69

1/20/2020 04:00 Pressure 45

1/20/2020 04:00 Speed 52

1/20/2020 04:00 Flow 13

1/20/2020 08:00 Temperature 90

1/20/2020 08:00 Pressure 22

1/20/2020 08:00 Speed 51

1/20/2020 08:00 Flow 22


This table also contains a timestamp four data points: Temperature, Pressure, Speed and Flow. However, for each timestamp there are four individual records, one for each point.

Text File Data Loggers Terminals like Allen Bradley’s PanelView Plus and Red Lion can be configured to log data to csv/text files periodically and create files on an hourly/daily/weekly basis.

XLReporter can treat these files as a historian and retrieve data across multiple files by stitching the appropriate files together.

Download/Copy Files One of the main problems with logging data on these terminals is there is not a lot of memory available for long term storage and once the memory is maxed out, files are deleted.

To compensate for this, as part of defining the connector to the text files, files can be downloaded from the terminal either through the local network or via FTP.

XLReporter Summary Calculations XLReporter provides a set of summary calculations that can be used against any historian, time series database or data logger.


In the case where the historian does not provide summary calculations from the server like time series databases and text file data loggers, these are the only summary calculations that are available for reports.

Not only does XLReporter provide basic calculations like counts, averages, minimums, maximums and totals but also industry specific calculations like produced energy and produced emission.

These calculations can be performed on the raw data collected in the historian or on interpolated samples if supported by the historian.


XLReporter Summary Calculations also support filtering to prevent unwanted values from contributing to the calculations. For example, when reporting on the minimum temperature of an oven it would make sense to not consider any of the low temperature values recorded during startup. This can be done by setting a filter to eliminate any values less than a certain threshold.

Time Period When defining a history data group the Time Period tab defines the overall duration of data to request along with the interval at which to retrieve the data.

Period The Period settings define the total duration of time for the data. Most of these are relative time periods meaning that they are relative to the current date (and possibly time) of the system. There are also options to use Variables to determine the start and end which can be set during runtime as well as an option to drive the time period based on a query to a Database to retrieve start and end times.

Interval The definition of Interval depends on the type of group selected.

Summary Values

For a Summary Values group the Interval defines how the Period is divided up to produce calculations. The choices available are:

Count The number of intervals over the duration. For example if the Duration is 1 day and the Count is 24, hourly values are returned from the group.

Every The time interval over the duration such as 1 hour, 15 minutes, etc.

Raw Values/Text

For a Raw Values or Raw Text group the Interval defines whether Every raw value over the Duration is returned or a specific Count of values. When Count is selected, the Time Ordering influences what values are returned. For example, if Time Ordering is Ascending and Count is set to 25, the first 25 values recorded


during the duration are returned. If Time Ordering is Descending the last 25 values recorded during the duration are returned.

Go Beyond Reporting Intermediate Summaries While XLReporter can retrieve calculated data at specific intervals over a given timer period, the longer the time period the longer it can take to retrieve the data. In addition, some historians may restrict the amount of data that can be retrieved at one time.

To make this easier, XLReporter can retrieve “smaller” summaries values and export that data to a relational database along with the date the summary is for.

Then in reports that need longer range summaries instead of requesting all the data from the historian, the data can be retrieved from the database which will be much more responsive.

Web Portal Any device with a web browser can access scheduled reports or produce reports on-demand. In other words, any authenticated user connected to the process network can access reports and dashboards from a desktop, phone or tablet.

The report responds to the display size of the device. This means that a user can view in-depth information from their desktop or from the process floor using dashboards on the phone to validate materials usages and machine efficiency.

Case Studies Equipment Effectiveness Requirement A manufacturer needed to produce a daily report summary of overall equipment effectiveness as well as to keep the shop floor notified of their productivity by displaying this information on message boards.

Database


Solution This is an example of a report being refreshed every hour to produce new KPIs for the daily summary and also send the new KPIs to the PLC so that they can be displayed on the message boards.

Batch Dashboard Requirement

A manufacturer needed to produce reports over a discrete time period like a batch cycle, start and stop of equipment or during a backwash. The batch reports needed to be generated on demand by operators based on the ID of the cycle.

Solution

This is an example of using Analytics to monitor the start and end of the cycle to maintain a list of ID’s along with the start and end times and log those to a database.

Using the time frames recorded, the operators are presented with a list of ID’s to choose from. Once chosen, the start and end time are used to retrieve the data from the historian for the report.

Business Proxy Report Requirement

A manufacturer needed to produce a report that calculated KPIs and then export that data from the report to the business system. However the IT department will not allow direct access to the database on the business system.

Historian

Frames


Solution

This is an example of using XLReporter’s Data Management to take data brought into the report and exporting it out to a different format for use by others.

In this case, rather than exporting the data from the report directly to the database, instead the KPIs are exported to a csv file that is saved to the DMZ where it can be picked up by IT.

Historian

CSV, XML

SQL Server, LIMS

Report from historians, databases and data loggers · 2020. 6. 23. · data sources. Historical...

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