FrameworX and FactoryStudio 9.2 with Integrated Canary Historian

September 1st Webcast - Q&A Responses

How do you see the future of OSI / PI under Aveva ?
Jeff Knepper: I was excited about the merger and believe that AVEVA and OSI are a perfect fit for one another…. as far as the future, we will all have to wait and see. In the meantime, our focus will remain on providing easy to use solutions that are powerful and open to other systems and platforms

Jeff, can we scale the historian and add Axiom as the project grows?
Jeff Knepper: Absolutely! We developed a tool that will allow you to connect to PI via their API or SDK and convert existing PI archives into Canary archives!

Conversion of older SCADA systems to Tatsoft?
Marc Taccolini: We can import the tag database from most SCADAs – all the tag definition and, in same cases, even Alarm and IO definitions. Importing graphics is possible in some cases, but usually it’s worth redoing those with current technologies. 

How would Canary be utilized If our system implementation is all in HTML?
Phillip Tomachevski: The Canary system works as the historian – you can use even HTML or WPF displays, it does not impact at all on your visualization.

I am not familiar with FactoryStudio; is this just an HMI to the Canary Historian?
Marc Taccolini: We do way beyond that! It’s a platform where you can create really advanced IOT 4.0 solutions, build real-time applications and much more. Learn more here.

Is there a lite version for running on an Edge device for specific application?
Harry McCollum: Yes, but Canary Historian will need a Windows at the Edge. At Tatsoft we offer a FactoryStudio Edge/Gateway version, which you run without graphics, just as a data collector, that allows you to store and forward to the Canary Historian.

How does redundancy work with Canary?
Jeff Knepper: If you want to log data to two different Canary Historians – from the login point, you just name both of these Historians. We create essentially two different data streams through our senders and receivers services, so you’re sending two different feeds to each server. That way, if for some reason one of the servers is down, the other is not affected. It’s not a A to B replication, it’s two independent streams to both servers.

With the included 500-tag canary historian with Tatsoft, can I just purchase an Axiom client later and use Axiom as trending tool, or is bundled historian with Tatsoft limited to only using Tatsoft trending, and I would need to upgrade to a full Canary (all features) to utilize Axiom etc.?
Jeff Knepper: If you want to upgrade to the full Canary System, you’ll receive back any money you spent toward Canary Historian Tags – the 500 tags are included, so you won’t spend on that, and then the upgrade to the Canary System starts at $4.000. With that you gain the Excel Add-On, the Axiom license, as well as the other components.

Is hive MQ the only broker you can work with in this version?
Phillip Tomachevski: No, we can work with multiple brokers, including MQTT, SparkplugB, and even MQTT on Azure
FactoryStudio has its own broker with no extra cost if needed!

Is that redundancy available from within FactoryStudio?
Marc Taccolini: Besides the built-in functionalities in Canary, we’ve also added  our own redundancy features. When you deploy a FactoryStudio project, you can use two redundant servers, and we have the hot stand-by scenario to switch which server is the active one, and that hot stand-by feature can publish data to one or two Canary Historian. So the FactoryStudio application can be redundant. Also, when you define those tag providers, we have the concept of private and back-up – we don’t need to have two live feeds, we have built-in in our configuration the possibility to have a secondary data-source.

Does Canary redundancy require an additional full license?
Jeff Knepper: No, it does not! In fact, we’re offering a discount in additional Canary Serves when purchased via Tatsoft. 

MQTT 5.0 Compatible?
Marc Taccolini: The current 9.1 version of FactoryStudio is not, but FactoryStudio 9.2 will be!

Is it also compatible with MQTT 3.1.1?
Marc Taccolini: Yes, it is!

Anyway to migrate from PI to Canary?
Jeff Knepper: Absolutely! We developed a tool that will allow you to connect to PI via their API or SDK and covert existing PI archives into Canary archives!

Regarding permissions to read and write data to tags being historized in Canary, is that security management done on the FactoryStudio side? what about any other tag management, all in FactoryStudio?
Marc Taccolini: Yes! Because the Canary works as a native historian, you can use all the tools we have to make connections securely – which user has access, which data will be allowed to go to Historian, etc. Besides Canary’s own security features, our own security tools will allow you to manage data. The beauty of this integration is that since it’s done on the .NET API level, almost anything can be done inside of FactoryStudio, so you rarely have to do anything inside of Canary.

Migration tool available for FactoryTalk Historian (I know it is essentially OSIPI) to Canary? How reliable is it?
Jeff Knepper: We’ve made validity tests and they’ve always have come back as real reliable with no concern for data loss.

Are there any other canary clients besides FactoryStudio and Axiom?
Jeff Knepper: The answer is yes, there are. Everything will depend on architecture – let’s talk about an Enterprise application, multiple sites bringing data back to a corporate data server. If this entire application is Tatsoft, there are going to be very few needs to do more than just Canary Historian under the covers. But let’s talk about a use case where you have 20 different sites, running SCADA solutions and for whatever reason you’re not running Tatsoft at the corporate level. This is where it’ll be advantageous to have Canary upgraded to the full system, because you’ll be able to feed data from multiple systems into Canary Database and extract that data via our ODBC connector, our MQTT publisher feed, etc – you’re essentially adding connectivity. So basically, there are other connectors, but they’re not necessary if you’re staying inside the Tatsoft system.
Marc Taccolini: One thing that’s worth mentioning is that our connection with Canary works at the .NET API level. So Canary has webservices interface, so you can have many client’s accessing data quite easily – as it should be, since it’s an open platform, like us. But we’ve created a .NET API level integration, so even when you’re running a web client, behind the scene we’ll move the data through the .NET API, which allows better performance and security on the client side.

DOT Net vs Ignition Java etc?
Jeff Knepper: .NET will always have a better performance solution over other services – we’ll just leave it at that!

Do you need extra FS tags if you are surfacing Canary data from non FS system?
Marc Taccolini: Yes. When connecting to an external Canary System or additional they will be counted as communicated points. That being said, we have a new feature on 9.2, tag provider dynamic data – with this feature only the tags in use in a given time (like in a display that is open), are counted for licensing.

Docker support?
Marc Taccolini: FactoryStudio can store inside a Docker – currently, the Canary Historian is not available on Docker, so you need to send that feed to a Historian in a different server! But that’s one of the benefits of this partnership – we can run the data collection on the edge devices, which supports store-and-forward, hot stand-by, and we can publish the data to Canary even if it’s in an isolated layer.

Where would you say Canary Historian has easier penetration Manufacture or Continuous Process Industry?
Jeff Knepper: We have good use and a high number of systems in both but by percentage continuous process – but we believe this is simply because there is a higher percentage of continuous process manufacturing!