Was the OSISoft PI Regional Seminar Worthwhile?

Our customers at Automated Results regularly ask us if it is worthwhile to attend the Regional Seminars around the country and the Annual Users Conference in California. The fact that we have attended each year since 1996 is a pretty good testimony, but it’s worth elaborating on.

I attended the Oct 27th, 2009 OSISoft Regional Seminar in Raleigh, NC; it was a 1 day seminar, yet it provided a tremendous amount of value:

• Information on new PI application offerings and releases
• Understanding where OSISoft is heading so we can plan ahead
• Keeping in touch with OSISoft personnel, our customers, and other OSISoft customers
• Sharing new ideas and uses for PI with others
• Learning how others are using PI

As our customers are asking to be more visible online and move their information more real-time, it was interesting to hear Ron Kolz and Julie Zeilenga’s talks about OSISoft’s expanding their presence in real-time applications like Microsoft Data Centers and Front-end data loading from commercial and residential power customers. It’s great to see OSISoft’s marketing and engineering innovations paying off, which re-affirms their leadership position in the real-time industry.

Personally, I look forward to the OSISoft Product Roadmap, which describes what software has been released with a description of their features and how to apply it. It also covers what is coming up in the future so we can understand how it all comes together. Jay Lakumb talked about the gamut of products, one products that caught my interest was the Analysis Framework (PI AF), PI Notification. Being a prior member of the ISA S88 Batch Standard committee in the early 1990s, I strongly believe that PI customers can benefit from mapping their equipment (asset) and associated tags in PI. The PI AF is a replacement for the original Module Database. PI AF has scaleable performance because they utilize MS SQL server and now populating the AF does not use up PI tags, which was a deterrent in the past. I’m very excited about PI Analysis Framework; we have a customer that has been holding off defining their equipment hierarchy until the AF is released, so I’ll be digging into it immediately.

I’m also interested in the Web Services offering to communicate with PI. We have been implementing MOSS Sharepoint, been working with eCommerce sites, and been implementing web applications on the Internet (Business-to-Business, multiple locations within a corporation, and retail). We’ve found web services to be an efficient way to communicate between different Internet-enabled applications. We are also finding these applications could benefit from access to time-series information, so I’m looking forward to prototype the PI web services.

Others at Automated Results have been involved in implementations of High Availability (HA) and I’ve listened to their initial challenges and work-arounds, but it was great to hear Chris Coen talk about the OSISoft HA offering and how it works, what PI functionality isn’t HA compliant yet (ex. PI SDK, PI Batch), and their prioritized implementation plan to get all modules to be HA compliant. N-way High Availability PI databases and interfaces is a huge challenge, but essential functionality for an ever-increasing number of applications (ex. power, pharmaceutical, etc).

Julie Zeilenga talked about their recent release of the BacNet interface and it’s application in the Microsoft Data Centers. The PI OPC interface is a powerful interface to communicate with a large number of control systems; we implement a lot of these interfaces at the industrial sites. I think the BacNet interface is equally as powerful to interface with utilities and computer/network equipment. It’s application is amazing!

The information sharing and face-to-face networking is extremely valuable as an OSISoft partner and as an OSISoft customer. Both the annual user’s conference and the regional seminars are time well-spent. If you can’t afford the user conference this year, then make sure you get to a regional event, it is a small investment in your total cost of ownership in your PI implementation.

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PI Tag Naming Conventions

Abstract

OSISoft PI best practices suggest that PI tags conform to a strict naming convention to allow users to quickly find their data within a small PI database today and a larger database in the future. One needs to consider how to efficiently differentiate and search a large number of PI tags that could span multiple units, areas, buildings, and locations, as well as consider the diversity of user’s backgrounds that access PI.

Knowing what to consider can make it easy to design a good PI Tag naming convention and adhering to the convention can make it easy for your users to efficiently find the data they need.

Introduction

The OSISoft PI system records data over time in a time-series database so you can trend and analyze historical data within a timeframe (ex. Power consumption over the last 24 hrs, valve positions during the last production). 

One database can store a complete history of all devices and inputs within a facility (CPU utilization, Memory and disk space consumption, network throughput, CPU fan speeds, CPU temperature, cabinet air flow, power consumption, etc).  The OSISoft architecture can handle millions of different datapoints recorded at subsecond intervals (ex. 10,000 values/sec).

Each different datapoint is known as a PI tag. A PI tag holds a single value over time (ex. a flowrate, a valve position). If an instrument emits multiple attributes (ex. process value, setpoint, alarm state, upper limit), each of these attributes would be stored in its own PI tag.

Criteria

Tag names must be able to differentiate:

• Locations
• Units and areas
• Data types within one instrument (ex. setpoint vs. process value)
• Audiences

To handle each of these cases, Automated Results recommends a PI Tag be made up of different segments and that each segment be separated by a unique character. For example:

Facility:Unit_EquipmentName.DataType

Example: Boston:UF01_InletPressure.SP

Boston facility
Ultrafiltration unit 1
Inlet Pressure sensor
Setpoint value

Differentiate Equipment

One might use PI to capture historical information for one processing unit (100 PI tags) or all processing units within a large global corporation (1,000,000+ tags). As the number of PI tags grows, it can become difficult to find the right data when you need it, even if you are familiar with the facility and the PI data.

To handle needs today and into the future, create a tag name in segments that represents an equipment hierarchy from physical locations, building, processing areas, and units (Note: The ISA S88 Batch standard is a good reference for equipment naming.).

Differentiate Equipment Types

Within a given unit, there can be a large number of tags and finding a specific data point can be confusing. If you pre-define a set of acronyms to that represent each type of equipment, one can quickly isolate the set of tags.

For example:

• VLV Valve
• FLO Flowrate
• LVL Level
• TMP Temperature

Differentiate Data Types

A given a single piece of equipment, there can be a set of data types assigned to it. Similar to equipment acronyms, establish a pre-defined set of data types.

For example:

• CO Control Output
• PV Process Value
• SP Setpoint

Diverse Audiences

As your PI implementation evolves, you will find a broader audience interested in accessing PI data from line operators to upper management, vendors, and possibly customers.

One could use the facility drawings and its naming conventions to define your PI tag names, but you may be missing one or more segments of your user base; those users who are not engineers and/or are not close enough to the process to relate to the names.

There are 3 ways to address a diverse audience:

• Replace engineering naming with more generic abbreviated text
• Include additional abbreviated text in the tag name
• Define a standard PI tag description naming convention

Extending the tag name to include a larger audience can introduce tag names that are too long and take up too much ‘real estate’ on the screen, especially the legend of a trend.

A PI tag description naming convention is a great idea and should be done, but users not familiar with the process have to rely on the additional description field to find their data is adding a level of training and support complexity.

We recommend the first method to handle a wide audience by using a more universal set of abbreviations in order to keep the tag name short and simplify the PI Tag search techniques.

Summary

Even if you have a small PI system, pre-define a segmented PI Tag name that considers the long-term use of the PI within your company and a broad audience.

Have more questions? Need help defining a tag naming standard? Want to get a second opinion? Contact Automated Results via email or give us a call: (828) 862-6667.

OSIsoft PI Historian: A Data Historian Overview

A PI Historian is a real-time data historian developed by OSIsoft. The PI Historian records data values over time in a proprietary time-series database. All different types of data can be recorded and each distinct piece of data is known as a PI tag. For a given PI tag, you record its events or data values over time. The recording of different data over time allows for historic data graphing and analysis, for example:

• Watch free disk space degrade over time in a Microsoft Data Center
• Monitor a valve for an evironmental release in a production facility
• Record which lot of raw material went into a batch of Tylenol
• Monitor power usage on a turbine power skid in Iraq
• Monitor the temperature of your tropical fish tank
• Monitor Search Engine rankings for a keyword phrase

The use of a data historian is widespread and growing more diverse every day! Automated Results has been working with this product and it’s manufacturer since 1996.

Have a question about process historians or OSI PI or Give us a call: (828) 862-6667 or send us an email