The PI Integrator for
Esri ArcGIS is the product that allows you to
expose your PI System data in a real-time
geographical context using the Esri ArcGIS
platform. What does this mean?
It means that you can take this data that is
stored in your PI System for these
assets... For example, like this locomotive
here which has both meta data like fluid capacities
and performance specs as well as this
real-time data like the fluid temperature and the speed.
And even a latitude and longitude
which are measured by a GPS.
As as first step, you can bring all of this
data into the Esri ArcGIS platform and
start looking at your assets on a map which shows
their current position and the other information,
updating in real-time.
And like I mentioned, this is really just the first
step when using the Esri ArcGIS platform because
this platform allows you to create dynamic
data intense maps. And with all of this information
presented, you can begin to conduct location based
analytics like how the weather might be
impacting these assets. In this
video, we'll identify what software components
are used to link these two systems together
and make this happen. To do this, we'll
draw a very high level architecture map of the
data flow. For more details on the
architecture, check out our full details
architecture video which does a more deep
dive. To begin with, let's start off with the
end result. Real-time data on the Esri ArcGIS
client.
When we are talking about maps,
these individual items on the map, they are
considered as features. These features
could be a stationary well, a moving
locomotive, river, transmission line, zone,
even a weather front.
These items are all features on a map.
The way Esri clients work is they load
the feature services and their feature layers onto the
map. A feature layer,
is essentially a collection of like features
and how their data should be presented.
For example, these green dots all represent
locomotives in this region and they are
added to this map as a feature layer.
Related feature layers can also be grouped
under the same feature service.
In our integration, the feature layers
are collection of elements that are based
off of the same AF element template.
As you can see, in order to provide
real-time data to the assets on this map, we need to be
able to update this feature service.
To do this, you need the
Esri ArcGIS Geo Event Processor
which Esri will be renaming in the next
release to the ArcGIS Geo Event
Extension for Server. This component
is an add-on which enables you to send
real-time data to the feature service. And it
also allows you to process and filter the
data and do geo fencing. There are a lot of
capabilities available. In our integration,
the Geo Event Processor is specifically powering the
real-time updates by pushing the data from the
PI System to the feature services.
Now how does the Geo Event
Processor get updates from the PI
System? That's where the PI Integrator for
Esri ArcGIS comes into the picture.
It's used to first define these map layers on the
Esri platform and it collects updates from the
PI System and exposes the updated
data on an http end point which is
then polled by the Geo Event Processor.
And just to note, all of the
http connections are secureable
as https. All of
these pieces working together,
help bring your PI System data to the Esri
ArcGIS platform.