Historian Concepts
Historian Concepts
Historian Concepts
Historian
Concepts Guide
Version 17.2.000
April 2018
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide
Contents
Cont act Us ............................................................................................................................... 3
Index ......................................................................................................................................... 33
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Welcome to Wonderware Historian
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Process data: About tags and values
Value only
Value + Time
Recording each value with a timestamp
allows you to see trends, pinpoint process
errors, etc.
Historian tracks when a record is sent by
the device and when it is received by
Historian. This helps to clarify the
information if there is a dat a lag, or if values
are added or updated later.
Value + Time
Value + Time + Quality
And because errors can occur – from minor mechanical hiccups to major area-wide blackouts –
Historian also records a data quality indicator for each record.
If something happens that may affect the data
quality, the quality indicator reflects that. That way,
you can know if the quality less than optimal for
some records, and use that information to report
and as accurately as possible.
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Types of tags
Wonderware Historian can handle a wide range of dat a by supporting these tag types:
Analog
Measures a continuous physical quantity, such as a tank’s
volume or a boiler's temperature.
Di screte
Records one of t wo states for the tag. For example: on/off,
open/closed, jam/cleared.
String
Capt ures a text expression--with no special format--t hat is
treated as a single data item. A string tag could be used to
capture the state of a machine; for example: "started",
"stopped", "jammed", or "cleared".
Event
Records an instance when a tag meets a preset requirement.
For example, a process event tag can let you know when a
batch number changes.
System
Reflects a predefined system variable. System tags are used to
collect the system's performance data. Wonderware Historian
system tags have a "Sys" prefix (for example, SysTimeSec).
Analog summary
Reflects summarized data (minimum, maximum, average, and so on) that is configured to be
replicated from one historian to another.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Process data: About tags and values
State summary
Reflects summarized data (minimum time in state, maximum time in state, average time in state,
and so on) that is configured to be replicated from one historian to another, or stored locally.
You can configure analog, discrete, string, and legacy history event tags through the SMC. For more
information, see Viewing and Configuring Tags in the Wonderware Historian Administration Guide.
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Sources of data
Historian can accept dat a from a number of sourc es. The most typical scenario is data acquisition from
an I/O server.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data acquisition: Getting data into Historian
Note: The SuiteLink protoc ol can be used to collect data from an I/O server on the
same or different computer than the IDAS instanc e. The DDE protocol can be used
only when the I/O server is on the same computer as the IDAS instance.
For each data value acquired by IDAS, the timestamp, value, and quality are
attached.
Then the values are sent through the Historian Client Access Layer (HCA L) to a Historian Client
Access Point (HCAP) on the Historian server, and then to storage. HCAL is a client-side software lay er
that provides programmatic access to storage, retrieval, and system configuration functionality in the
Wonderware Historian.
Historian accepts and historizes each data value according to the storage rules for the tag to which the
data value belongs.
For more details, see Configuring Data Acquisition in the Wonderware Historian Administration Guide.
Other data acquisition options
As this diagram illustrates, Wonderware Historian can accept data from a range of sources.
In addition to I/O servers, Historian can acquire data from these sources:
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data acquisition: Getting data into Historian
Store-and-forward safeguards
Historian uses a store-and-forward method to protect against dat a loss if communication is interrupted
between the data source and Historian.
Systems using the Data Acquisition Subsystem (IDAS ) or Historian Client Access Layer (HCA L) to
send dat a to Historian are able to use the store -and-forward method in case of communication breaks.
If the data source loses communication with Historian, the source stores the collected data until
communication is reestablished. Then, it forwards the stored dat a to Historian.
Data categories
Wonderware Historian is able to process and store data in a variety of ways. It categorizes each data
record by type to provide a consistent framework for dat a operations. Each category of data has a
separate set of characteristics and is handled differently by the historian.
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Storage modes
Depending on a tag's definition, Historian uses one of these storage modes to retain the values
received for that tag:
No storage - No values are stored.
Forced storage - All collected values are stored.
For comparison's sake, this is what forc ed storage looks like. The red dots represent collected
values. All of these values are stored by Historian.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data storage: Preserving huge amounts of data over time
Cyclic storage - Only values that occur at a specified time interval are stored. Using the same
collected values as shown above, cyclic storage retains only the values represented by red d ots.
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For more information on delta storage modes, see About Delta Storage Mode in the Wonderware
Historian Adminstration Guide.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data storage: Preserving huge amounts of data over tim e
Each history block stores all data for a specified duration. The default history block duration is one day,
but may be as little as one hour. When there is data to be stored in that time interval, Historian creates
a new history block for that data. For example, if a history block is defined for a day's worth of data,
when it receives the first data value for the second day, Historian creates a new one-day history block
and places the corresponding data into the new bl ock.
As data is acquired, the size of these history blocks grows on a continual basis, being limited only by
the size of the hard disk on which the historian resides.
If the historian was not running for some time, or if a history block is deleted, for a certain time period,
there may be a gap in the sequence of history blocks -- also known as a block gap.
History block formats are specially optimized for storing time -series data, while general-purpose
database management systems typically are not.
Compact storage formats reduce the storage space requirements than would be required in a
general-purpose database. Upon retrieval, historical data is presented by the Wonderware Historian
OLE DB provider as if it were stored in SQL Server tables.
Historian partitions
Historian organiz es history blocks within partitions. As real-time dat a arrives, Historian stores it in
history blocks located in the main data partition. At the same time, Historian aut omatically computes
and records a corresponding hourly summary for each analog tag value rec eived. The auto -summary
values are stored in auto-summary history blocks within the aut o-summary partition.
For more information on history blocks and partitions, see Managing Partitions and History Blocks in
the Wonderware Historian Adminstration Guide.
Auto-summarization
For every analog tag in the system, Wonderware Historian creates a local replication entity and a
one-hour summary tag. As values arrive for an analog tag, Historian automatically computes and
records a summary.
Auto-summary values are stored in their own history blocks within the auto-summary partition.
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With auto-summarization, Historian can quickly and efficiently retrieve large -volume data for a long
duration, even months or years.
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Retrieval modes
Historian can acquire and store huge amounts of data and allows you to choose from among several
retrieval modes to view and int erpret the data you need.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data retrieval: Transforming data into information
Cyclic
Delta
Full
Interpolated
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Best Fit
Average
Minimum
Maximum
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data retrieval: Transforming data into information
Integral
ValueState
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RoundTrip
The computing power of both the client and the server is exploited by optimizing processor intensive
operations on the server and minimizing data to be transmitted on the network to improve system
performance.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data retrieval: Transforming data into information
With InSight, you can type the name -- or even a part of a name -- for the tags you want to analyze.
Then you can choos e the chart type and timeframe to report on. InSight also lets you save and share
your dat a.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide Data replication: Delivering information to people who need it
Many-to-many
For more information about setting up and using replication, see Managing and Configuring Replication
in the Wonderware Historian Administration Guide.
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Important: Be careful not to create or modify a replicated tag on a tier-1 historian to have the same
tagname that already exists on a tier-2 historian. The system does not prevent you from having a
replicated tag on a tier-2 historian receiving data from two or more different tier -1 historians. However,
when you retrieve data for that replicated tag on the tier-2 historian using the tagname, an incorrect
blend of data from the two (or more) data sources is returned.
There are two types of replication: simple replication and summary replication. Summary replication
provides periodic summaries of high resolution data, while simple replication retains the original data
resolution.
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Wonderware Historian Concepts Guide
Index
No index entries found.
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