Now you will notice that tag
searches are the primary way of finding things in PI.
We would eventually for people to use more
asset-center approach using things like Analysis Framework elements
in searching for objects and then tags
hanging off the objects. And we will go over that a little bit later on.
But, traditionally, people search for things and found them using a
simple tag search. So, I am going to exercise a couple of tag
searches and just point some things that are really obvious. I am going to go
into the PI System Management Tools to do this. And, within
System Management Tools, what you will find is there's a,
a session here called Tools,
and within Tools you can find Tag Search,
and it brings up this common Connection Dialog, or
common Tag Search Dialog. It's common for most of our applications.
Incidentally, just to demonstrate, if I go
into my Point Builder for example -- this is the Point Builder,
this screen right here -- and I choose Search,
it brings up exactly the same
Search Window. So, it's, it's a common dialog that we will
use throughout the PI System. And, you can search for tags
simply by using naming conventions. For example, if I know
I have created some tags that begins with the letter -- begin with the
letter CD, I just choose CD in the Tag Mask.
It is not case sensitive. And,
it uses the * as a wildcard character. And this shows
me just those things that are,
that are coming up with a, a, --
beginning with the letters CD. Now, compare that to using CD
with a question mark,
or, excuse me, CD with a
question mark 158,
and what this is going to find is everything that has
one character missing between this first to CD and the last
158. So, it's looking at one character at a time. It should
find just two results, these two that you see right here. I will go
ahead and choose the Search, and, as you can see, that is
searching just for individual words -- or individual letters.
Now search for two letters. Now we find just one
result. Now, of course, these
tags, or these searches, can be mixed
so that I can look for, for example, two different
things at the same time. For example, all those tags
that match this Tag Mask and also have a Point Type of
Digital.
And there's only one tag that meets that criteria on this demo system.
So, let me reset my settings. And different
Point Types -- here are my Float 32s, here are my
Int32's. There's only one of them.
And here are my Digital Tags.
And, then, in addition -- let me reset again.
You can search for just one of these things, either
a Value, a Status, or a Point Attribute. So, for example,
a Status -- you might want to
search for something like Point Created. Now, Point
Created is a Digital State in our Digital State Set.
If I, if I click here, I can see the System
Digital State. And, if I go down,
I can find Point Created here. Yeah, Point
Created would be a problem indicating
that the tag's been created but, for some reason, we are not seeing
any data. Let's take a look. I will do a Search.
And in this case, I find no tags that have that. But this,
this would be an example of doing some troubleshooting
to look for tags that are, you know, have
some kind of a problem or a value that you are
not interested in. We have other
Utilities to help with that as well. But, I can search, in addition
to -- for Values, I can actually search for Attributes as well.
So, for example, let's say we are looking for the Attribute
called Location Code 5,
and we want
to see everything within Location5 equal to zero.
Now I do a Search. It's going to go out and find all of those tags that
match that criteria,
The Advanced Search gives you
more capabilities, and notably, the ability to search
for multiple Attributes at the same time.
So, let's just demonstrate. I will go back
into the System Management Tools. I will do another Tag Search.
This time I am going to go into the Advanced Search. Here's
Basic. Here's the Advanced Search. And, for example,
I would like to specify that all the
Point Sources are equal to
the question mark. That would be for the Random Interface. And then, let's
take a look for a second Attribute -- Location5 is equal to one.
So I add those two criteria,
and I get this set of tags. Now, I know those tags have
that two Attributes because they are Random Number Tags
with, where we are specifying what type of Random Number
we are getting. Now that's an example
of doing a two-pull search here, using the
Advanced Search. Now compare that to searching for those with
a Point Source of L and Location5
equal to zero. I get a different set of tags.
As you can see, you can go in there and edit that by hand.
And, technically, if you are real familiar with
SQL-structured Query Language Syntax, you could go through
and, as long as you know what the
database is that you are looking at, the name of the table,
you can specify a variety of things
just, just by typing in the SQL Code
yourself. So, we have a whole variety of, of
OLEDB- enabled
searches that I can apply using
this Advanced Search.
And finally, we come to doing an Alias
Search as a way of finding PI Tags. Now, an Alias
Search is a search
through what we call the Module Database. This is a,
an example of a Module Database Structure. It's a tree structure
that attempts to allow you to represent your
process as a series of assets
that are kind of arranged in a tree structure, as you can see here.
And then, within those assets, you can navigate to the
specific things that are hanging onto
those assets you want. So, for example, this particular
meter right here has a number of aliases which
are aliases that point to PI Tags.
So, as any unit might have, there's a lot of things
associated with pieces of equipment. We can navigate to those
things associated with that equipment using this Asset
Model. Now let me demonstrate in
real time, using the PI Module Database
Editor. Let's say I would like to take a look
for a PI Tag. I would like to find a PI Tag.
I do a Tag Search. I can do it the traditional way or
I can search for it using the Module Database Structure.
I will choose Alias Search and I will drill down through this. I can
find under MyPlant I have got these four Units, and
I know for a fact that within Unit2 there's a
Level Transmitter that I am very interested in. This happens
to point to that PI Tag called Sinusoid. So,
this is how I have been able to find it. I can be able to dra...
To go straight there, select that, and
I have got the tag that I am interested in. So, again, if I
need to find some other Level Transmitter,
instead of using some naming convention, I
simply go into this Unit
Structure here. I find those things that are also
Level Transmitters, and I
select them. And now, I am looking at all of my Level
Transmitters.
And it looks like I forgot to select all of them.
So, let me go ahead and do the Search. And see, like any good search engine,
we retrieve, or we cache, the latest results.
So, let me go ahead and select these two, which I forgot to
select before. And now I am looking -- this is
right here. All of my Level Transmitters are
assembled in one place. So what, what do we have here
really? Well, we have kind of an Asset Relative
Search. It's a Search that searches through this hierarchical
structure. The structure can be of any
type that you want. In this case, it's, it's a physical layout.
But, if you are an instrument technician, for example, you might want to
look at it a little differently. Instead of by layout, you may look
at it by manufacturer, for example.
Now, this Module Database I have been talking about -- this is just the first
of our attempts to come up with a, kind of an Asset Database
to work with the PI Server. You will notice we will talk later on in the
class about something called AF. It used to stand for Analysis
Framework, now it just stands for AF. AF is
a, kind of an Asset Database to
implement something we are calling Data Directory. Data Directory
is simply a much more efficient way of finding
things -- finding things by searching through
hierarchies, by searching through
objects rather than searching for tag
naming conventions or things like that. Now,
let's look at some things we could have done with this to make it a little easier.
I could have searched just by Alias. So, for example,
if I am looking for a Level Transmitter, just type Level.
And, let me choose MyPlant. This is going to search through
that tree, and find all those things that use the Alias
called Level. Let's select those, say OK, and now I am looking
at all my Levels.
And, like before, if I wanted to
do a two-pull search where I am searching just for specific modules,
I could, for example, limit this to just those
things that are in Unit3, for example. So I will go
ahead and go with Unit3
as my Module Mask, and if I choose this Search,
now we are only finding the Level Transmitter 4,
Unit3. So that's how I would identify
these things using this Alias Search.