Wonderware

Wonderware Antivirus Software Exclusions

| Greg Dubiel

After installing Wonderware Application Server, configure your antivirus software to prevent archive files from being scanned.

NOTE:

· Ensure that subfolders of the listed directories are also excluded.

· If you are using a 64-bit operating system, folder names must be specified accordingly. For example, the program files root directory in a 64-bit operating system is C:\Program Files (x86)\… and the application data root directory in a 64-bit operating system is C:\ProgramData\…

Antivirus software should not scan files in the following ArchestrA folders:

· C:\Program Files\ArchestrA\*.*

· C:\Program Files\Common files\ArchestrA\*.*

· C:\Program Files\FactorySuite\*.* (may not exist in newer installations)

· C:\Program Files\Wonderware\*.*

· C:\InSQL\Data\*.*

· C:\Historian\Data\*.*

· C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ArchestrA*.*

· History Store Forward directory default location:

    • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ArchestrA\
    • C:\Users\All Users\ArchestrA\

    · Checkpoint directory location default location:

      • C:\Program Files\ArchestrA\Framework\bin
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\ArchestrA\Framework\bin

      · InTouch Application folder path:

        • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ArchestrA\

        · SMC Logger Storage file path:

          • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ArchestrA\LogFiles\

          · SQL Server database files of type:

            • .mdf
            • .ldf

            Source: Wonderware Application Server 3.5 readme file at https://wdnresource.wonderware.com/support/patchfixes/1/ReadMe_WAS35P01.html#Antivirus Software Exclusions

            Two new Wonderware tech notes on GRAccess Toolkit (Tech Note 727 and Tech Note 728)

            | Greg Dubiel

            Wonderware recently released two new, inter-related tech notes on topics related to Wonderware GRAccess Toolkit:

            Tech Note 727 “Automating Object Configuration Tasks in the GRAccess Toolkit: Configuring Properties for Analog FieldAttribute” – this Tech Note describes configuring following properties for Analog Field Attribute (named AF_001) of a $UserDefined template using a C# console application: Access Mode to Output, Data Type to Float, Description to Adding description for AF_001 Field Attribute

            Tech Note 728 “Using GRAccess Toolkit to Determine Values and DataTypes for a Property” – this Tech Note describes the technique of finding Values and DataTypes for the following items:

              • AccessMode property of Analog Field Attribute (AF_001) needs to be set to Output
              • AnalogType property of Analog Field Attribute (AF_001) needs to be set to Float
              • Desc property of Analog Field Attribute (AF_001) needs to be set to Adding description for AF_001 Field Attribute

              The Values and Data Type found after the procedure can be used in your C# code implementation. Using this Tech Note as a guide, you can also find Values and DataTypes for other properties.

              Wonderware Intelligence software – sample (and simple) scenario

              | Greg Dubiel

              Here’s a sample dashboard created using Wonderware Intelligence software.

              The dashboard has been created around a scenario of a manufacturing company described below:

              1. Scenario

              Such a company would have a number of information systems such as:

              • financial accounting system (or invoicing system) – such system would provide information about sales volume along with profit margin attained
              • production tracking system (implemented as either, off-the-shelf solution such as Wonderware Operations, or as a 3rd party or custom solution) – this system could provide information about planned and actual production volume broken down by product, production line, machine etc. This system could also provide some quality information (e.g. material dimensions or other characteristics)
              • traditional HMI/SCADA system – which could provide some information about equipment utilization (e.g. downtime vs. uptime) and energy consumption (so that comparison between nominal energy consumption and the actual usage could be performed)

              Coming our of the current recession, the leadership of the company would like to get some information about their system to make smart decisions. They would like to know current and historical values of:

              • financials – sales and margin, broken down by customer and product
              • production schedule attainment broken down by shift
              • equipment efficiency by production line and individual machines
              • energy usage by line and machine

              This is where using Wonderware Intelligence software we can create data repository that combines and correlates information from all the data sources listed above.

              2. Wonderware Intelligence software – server side

              Wonderware Intelligence comes with a set of connectors to other products such as:

              • Wonderware Historian (formerly called IndustrialSQL Server or InSQL),
              • OSI Pi,
              • Oracle,
              • obviously generic Microsoft SQL Server
              • and CSV files.

              These connectors allow the Intelligence Server to import data on regular basis from the production system and put it in the Intelligence own data store (this way when run the reports we don’t tax the production system and data retrieval is much faster as the data is pre-aggregated).
              Information model created in Wonderware Intelligence has a form of multidimensional cube that allows us to slice and dice information according to our criteria. The model has three major components:
              image

              • data sources – they define how to connect to our data (e.g. financial accounting system or plant data historian system)
              • dimensions – they define our criteria (such as shift, product, customer etc)
              • measures – they define value we want to measure or analyze (sales volume, production volume etc)

              Shown here is a sample screenshot of Wonderware Intelligence data model in the ArchestrA IDE (Integrated Development Environment) used by Wonderware System Platform.

              After all these data sources, dimensions and measures have been defined, users can connect to them using Wonderware Intelligence Analytics Client – very easy to use and very powerful software that can be used directly by people who need the reports.

              3. Wonderware Intelligence software – power user experience

              image In the Intelligence Analytics Client environment, the user is presented a very intuitive data model that consists of dimensions and measures (as shown here). No need to know Transact SQL programming language, no need to get access to the production system, no need to know how to calculate daily total based on 1-minute data etc.

              The user is presented with a list of dimensions and measure and all we need to do is drag appropriate parameters to the worksheet. We can add filters, change sorting, change colors and much more, all using point and click user interface.

              What’s important is that the report users can create reports for themselves without waiting for their IT departments. They can save the reports locally in a way similar to saving Excel files and they can share them with other users.

              image

              The user can create multiple worksheets and then lay them out on a dashboard.

              Finally the dashboard can be published to the Intelligence Dashboard Server – just like the dashboard with which we started this posting.

              4. Intelligence Dashboard

              So let’s talk about the presented dashboard. It consists of four distinct parts:

              • Sales and Margin Contribution (upper left chart) – this report shows sales distribution per customer and per product expressed as a square – the bigger the square size is, the greater the sales volume is. On top of that, the color of the square represents our margin – red means low margin, green means good margin. How easy is it to figure out that we’re having a bit of a margin issue with products COO250 and COO378 – for some reason our margin on them is lower than on other products.

              image

              • Equipment Efficiency (upper right chart) – this report shows efficiency for each machine in the system. So it looks like Coffee Line has much lower efficiency comparing to any other line.

              image

              • Production Schedule Attainment (lower left chart) – this report shows how each shift attains their given production schedule. Well, it looks like the night shift may not be pulling its weight as much as it should.

              image

              • Energy Deviation (lower right chart) – this report show the difference between expected energy usage and the actual energy usage.

              image

              5. Summary
              All these concepts are very similar to multidimensional business intelligence systems such as Microsoft Analysis Services. But few things make Wonderware Intelligence look interesting:

              • most configuration steps can be performed without advanced programming knowledge.
              • conceptually Wonderware Intelligence’s model is a cube, but it’s implemented using a de-normalized SQL Server database which makes it really easy to query using regular client tools
              • finally, the dashboard creation environment is very easy to use by non-IT people (e.g. production engineers, quality personnel etc.)

              Performance Information Technologies provides consulting services related to reporting, plant & business intelligence and technology integration solutions for your plant or process. Contact us at greg.dubiel@perfinfo.com or (425) 440-0626.

              Free webinar on Wonderware Intelligence software available

              | Greg Dubiel

              As I informed earlier, Wonderware PacWest hosted a free webinar on the Wonderware Intelligence software on May 25th, 2010. Here’s a brief description of Wonderware Intelligence software.
              I had a pleasure of being a presenter and a guest speaker during this webinar. For those customers of Wonderware PacWest who missed the presentation, it was recorded and is now available for download on the Wonderware PacWest website at http://www.pacwest.wonderware.com/web/Training/OnlineSeminars.aspx#Intelligence.
              image
              Free Wonderware PacWest website login account is required to download the seminar (newly registered users – please allow 1 business day before attempting to download the seminar as your registration needs to be verified).
              Non-PacWest customers are out of luck here, but I am available to speak about Wonderware Intelligence or any other Wonderware software. Just contact me at greg.dubiel@perfinfo.com

              Wonderware Historian’s retrieval modes – free technical whitepaper from Wonderware North

              | Greg Dubiel

              Wonderware North released their Tech Tip on Wonderware Historian’s retrieval modes entitles “Wonderware Historian – A Look At Different Data Retrieval Methods”. The documents describes various retrieval modes of Historian in relation to data acquisition and it also compares built-in retrieval modes of Historian with standard Transact SQL aggregate functions.

              The document can be found on the Wonderware North website.

              Wonderware Application Server script attributes

              | Greg Dubiel

              The following table describes the scripting attributes available in Wonderware Application Server (aka Wonderware System Platform, aka ArchestrA software) version 3.x for each script defined in the Galaxy:

              Attribute Description Run-Time Access (Supervisory, User, Read-Only, None)
              <Script>.AsyncShutdownCmd If set to TRUE, the currently executing asynchronous script will be requested to shut down. This does not mean that the script actually will shut down. The script must be written to check this flag. Supervisory, User
              <Script>.Disabled If set to TRUE, the calculation of the expression and the execution of the script code will be stopped. Supervisory, User
              <Script>.ErrorCnt The number of errors detected for this script since last reset. Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionCnt The number of times this script has executed since the last reset. Only applies to Execute type scripts, both synchronous and asynchronous. Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionError.Condition If TRUE, the script engine encountered an error, such as divide-by-zero, .NET error or execution timeout) during last execution. This attribute can be alarmed. If alarmed, the alarm message is ExecutionError.Desc. Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionError.Desc The error message associated with the execution error condition. Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionTime The amount of time, in milliseconds, the script has been executing for asynchronous scripts. For synchronous scripts, this attribute reflects the time of the last execute. When the script has finished executing, the value remains at the final elapsed time for the script. When the script is restarted, this value is reset to zero (0). Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionTimeAvg The average per scan execution time, in milliseconds, since the script was last reset. Read-Only
              <Script>.ExecutionTimeStamp The last time the script executed. Read-Only
              <Script>.State Indicates the state the object’s script is in: Initializing, Error, Disabled, Busy, Ready.

              • Initializing indicates at least one of the script’s external references in the script expression is still initializing.
              • Error indicates an error occurred since the last time the script was triggered.
              • Disabled indicates the script execution was disabled.
              • Busy indicates that the script is currently executing (only applies to asynchronous scripts).
              • Ready indicates that an asynchronous script is not currently executing or that a synchronous script is not in an error or disabled state.
              		 Read-Only
              <Script>.StatsReset If set to TRUE, all statistics will be set to zero. Supervisory, User

              Wonderware Historian 10 will be released in February 2010

              | Greg Dubiel

              Wonderware Historian 10 is expected to be generally available in February 2010. It’s going to be the first major release in few years. It will introduce a set of new features included “tier historian” – read more about what’s new here. This release will also introduce support for SQL Server 2008 (32-bit only) and Windows Server 2008.
              Wonderware customers that have a valid support agreement will be eligible to receive Historian 10 license for free. Contact Wonderware PacWest if you want to get on support.

              Note: Wonderware Historian 10 will only support 32-bit version of SQL Server 2008 installed as a default instance. Named instances of SQL Server 2008 are not supported.

              Wonderware Tech Note 609 “ArchestrA Object Toolkit 3.1 Tips and Tricks” is available

              | Greg Dubiel

              Wonderware Tech Note 609 “ArchestrA Object Toolkit 3.1 Tips and Tricks” is available. Use the Wonderware ArchestrA Object Toolkit to create and compile custom ArchestrA Objects. This Tech Note covers the following scenarios you might encounter while developing an ArchestrA Object:

              • Adding a virtual Reusable Primitive (at the second level) under a virtual Local Primitive in Configtime Sethandler code
              • Error is Generated when Changing from a Local to a Reusable Primitive without changing its name. The error begins: The target aaPDF will not be created. The following files could not be located…

              Click here to review the tech note. Wonderware customers from outside of the Wonderware PacWest distribution area can access the Tech Note on the Wonderware Support Website.

              How to retrieve wide-history data from Wonderware Historian (InSQL) using a stored procedure

              | Greg Dubiel

              Below is an example of a stored procedure that will retrieve wide-history data from Wonderware Historian 9.0 (formerly known as IndustrialSQL Server or InSQL):

              CREATE PROCEDURE HistoryData
              @StartDateTime datetime,
              @EndDateTime datetime,
              @Tags varchar(500) = ‘[SysDateDay], [SysDateMonth], [SysDateYear]’
              –above: @Tags is an optional parameter, value after the equal sign is the default value if @Tags is omitted
              AS
              BEGIN
              SET NOCOUNT ON
              DECLARE @SQLString varchar(1000)
              SET @SQLString = ‘SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF ‘
              SET @SQLString = @SQLString + ‘SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY(INSQL, ‘
              SET @SQLString = @SQLString + + ‘”SELECT DateTime = convert(nvarchar, DateTime, 21), ‘ + @Tags + ‘ ‘
              SET @SQLString = @SQLString + ‘FROM WideHistory WHERE wwRetrievalMode = ”Cyclic” AND wwResolution = 1000 AND wwVersion = ”Latest” ‘
              SET @SQLString = @SQLString + ‘AND DateTime >= ‘ + CHAR(39) + CAST(@StartDateTime AS varchar(50)) + CHAR(39)
              SET @SQLString = @SQLString + ‘ AND DateTime <= ‘ + CHAR(39) + CAST(@EndDateTime AS varchar(50)) + CHAR(39) + ‘”)’ EXEC (@SQLString)
              END

              The procedure accepts 3 parameters:
              – Start date/time
              – End date/time
              – optional comma separated list of tag – this parameter allows the procedure to be run for different sets of tags
              To install the procedure just run the script above against your Wonderware Historian’s Runtime database from within MS SQL Server Management Studio 2005 (or MS SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager).
              Below is an example of how to run the command:

              EXEC HistoryData ‘20081027 21:04:00′,’20081027 21:07:00’, ‘SysTimeSec, SysDateDay’

              The example below retrieves data for tags SysTimeSec and SysTimeDay between Oct 27th, 2008 9:04pm and 9:07pm. But you can also skip the 3rd parameter and run it this way:

              EXEC HistoryData ‘20081027 21:04:00′,’20081027 21:07:00’

              In such case the procedure will return data for the list of tags specified as the default value of the @Tags variable (in the example below the default value of the @Tags variable is “SysDateDay, SysDateMonth and SysDateYear”.