Now if we want to start working with AF in PI
ProcessBook, the first thing we need to do is make sure
that PI Processbook knows about the AF
Server that we're interested in. Now this is
an opportunity to, I guess, beat a dead horse
or maybe more like just explain something that may
be still a confusion for some of you. And that is,
what is the difference between a PI System
and a PI Server, because, you know, here, here
we're running right headlong into this. We have these
two different connection dialogs you'll see here. There's this one called
File Connections, and this is the traditional
connection dialog in which we connect to a PI Server
that many of you who are longtime PI users,
ProcessBook and DataLink users, may be well
familiar with. But then we have this brand new one called PI
Systems. What in the world is that? Well, that is what
we use to connect to the different AF Servers.
So, because we're working within
ProcessBook now, which is meant to be the, the Graphical User Interface
for looking at all things across the PI System,
this is a real good opportunity to kind of make sure everybody
understands what the relationship is between this
thing we're calling the PI System and what we're calling
the PI Data Archive and the PI AF Server.
So, and if you recall --
so before we do that though, let's, let's go back --
I'll go to my chalkboard and let's just do a real quick
rehash of some of the terminology we're using here.
So, we'll start with the server that I'm real familiar with, and you
may be, those of you who have used PI for a long time, and that we call the
PI Data Archive Server. That's the current name
for something that we've called different things over the years. We
used to call it PI Universal Data Server, or simply the
PI Server. The current terminology, we're calling it the
PI Data Archive Server, and that's where we store the long
term historical data. That's where, you know, the data,
the real-time data that comes from a Control System or
a Lab Information Management System, or
whatever your data source is,
Windows, Performance Metrics, etc. that's going.
All that real-time data's being stored, archived, in that
thing that we call the PI Data Archive Server. Now,
that is one of the servers that
we're discussing today. And ProcessBook traditionally
connects directly to that. Today we add a new
wrinkle to that. We're talking about a connection to
the PI Asset Framework Server.
The PI Asset Framework Server,
or AF for short --
you can just call that the AF Server. So,
this AF Server is a relatively new
component for those of you who have been using PI for a long time.
And that's a, that's a server that -- it actually
could be on the same physical machine as the PI Data
Archive Server. In most cases we recommend that it's not.
But, together, if you take the two of those things
together, that's what we're calling nowadays the
PI Server. So, when we make reference to the PI
Server that's what we're talking about. This,
as a total in consideration, is what we call the PI
Server. So, I'll just label that PI Server.
It consists of both the, the
AF Server and the PI Data Archive Server, and
remember, I guess if we want to get real
hardcore here, we can mention in passing
that PI Asset Framework Server does require SQL Server.
So, that could actually be a third machine.
It could be running on the same machine as this. We'll, we won't
picture it here but that's another server that may be
involved in this. Now, all of that together,
as I said, is the PI Server. If you start now
adding our client application --
so for example, if you've got Windows Applications
here, PI ProcessBook DataLink,
you've got maybe a web-based application here --
so, for example PI Web Parts.
You know, all of these client applications,
as well, as well as any user-based
applications that you've created on your own --
maybe you've got a, an application that runs on a server.
Now this all together, if we take this as a whole,
this is what we're calling the PI System. So
the PI System is, if you incorporate the clients,
the data sources that we're getting data from,
that's what we're currently labeling the PI System.
So what is it we're concerned with
right now? Well, we're using PI ProcessBook.
ProcessBook is a client application. If you recall, of course,
ProcessBook looks at data in real-time as we're looking at
it, you know, connected to this PI Data Archive
Server. But, I've mentioned a couple of times
this analogy that,you know, if you can imagine
that we've got all kinds of interesting information over here
that, on the PI Data Archive Server, that
people would like to get to. But, if you've got that data
spread across many different servers, different PI
Data Archive Servers, what you would really like is
some kind of a, a mechanism to find that.
I call this a Super GPS. The PI Asset
Framework Server would be roughly the equivalent of something
that would, would help you find what you're interested in
over here. And, so that PI
Data Archive Server is something that you do have to connect
to in order to see these trends. You know we still want
to see these trends, but in order to find out which
Tags to actually trend, we're going to need to connect
to this, this PI Asset Framework Server.
That's going to help us find what we're retrieving
from this PI Data Archive Server.
So, when we make our connection right now in ProcessBook,
you'll notice there's two connections here. We'll connect to this
PI Data Archive Server. That actually happens by default when
you launch ProcessBook. And, then also -- well, right now
anyway, we're going to explicitly show you how you can specify
which AF Server we're going to connect to.
Now, it may well be
that if you've got, say, two
AF Servers, both of those AF Servers may
reference data that's stored on this one PI Data Archive.
That's no problem. I mean just like you can have a GPS,
you know, two different brands of GPS or two different
instances of a GPS that point to the same
address, that's not a, a difficulty.
In fact, this PI Data Archive Server doesn't even need to know
that that's how you, as a user, got to the,
to the data. So, again, to summarize,
let's go from the top down now. We have a PI
System. That PI System includes clients and
servers, and gives us kind of a comprehensive way
of finding and then trending data in
real-time. Okay. The PI System
consists, consists of the clients plus the PI Server.
And the PI Servers consists of at least two
servers, this PI AF Server
to help you find things in the PI
Data Archive Server which is the historian.
It stores that real-time data. And I'll just
mention one more thing about this PI AF Server.
I've mentioned over and over again, it helps us find things in this
PI Data Archive Server. But, remember, AF Server can
also find things in relational databases, in
things that are stored as calculations in AF
itself, and it can go to other sources
of data, not just a single data archive server.
So, having said all that,
let's go back to PI ProcessBook and take a look at that --
the connection we saw. We saw File.
This is where we connect to the individual
PI Data Archive Server, and I only have
one of those in this environment. It's called OSISOFT-TRNG.
But, this is also where we would go
to specify which AF Server within the
PI System we're trying to get to. In this case I
have two AF Servers. This one right here called
NICKGX280. That's the one we've been using all, you know,
the entire CBT. I also have one called
OSISOFT-TRNG. You'll notice there are different databases
on there once I go ahead and connect.
I see I've got some different databases on there. Interestingly
enough though, these two different versions of
AF, or two different, I should say, servers of AF,
are actually, in come cases, some
of the Elements are pointing to the same Tags on that one
PI System, which is no problem as I said. You know, if you, if you
own three maps, every single one of those maps
can send you to the same address, so
I really like this analogy as you can say of
thinking of AF as a kind of a mapping mechanism.
So, I, I initially connect
here by choosing the,
choosing from this dialog right here,
choosing which AF Server I'm trying to get to. Now if you
need to configure a New AF Server, just click on here
and there's a right click here. You can choose New
System. You need to provide either the IP Address
or the Name,
the Computer Name, or node, I should say the Network Name
of the Server that's running AF.
And once I've selected whichever
AF Server I'm interested in, I can choose an
AF Database to use for my browsing.
Of course, on your machine, you just go ahead and use whichever
AF Database you're more familiar with.