Virtual Views

Avoid an Asset Model Mistake

Most solutions that provide asset modeling are requiring you model the data at the time of logging, or prior to archiving tag values.  This is a huge mistake.

Modeling data should be done post-archiving.  This allows you to create 'license-free' and 'risk-free' models based on how your clients need to consume information.

Perfectly Positioned For Client Requests

When a client requests data from the Canary Historian, the Canary Views Service functions as the 'go-between'.  The Views Service receives the query, extracts the required data from the Historian, and then publishes that data to the client. As a system administrator, you can create as many Virtual Views of the data archive as you desire...without impacting licensing!

Canary's Virtual Views allow you to create asset models of the Canary Historian database without impacting the archived data or affecting your tag licensing.

When you create a new Virtual View, original tags names, metadata, and all tag values are referenced by that view. Rules are then built that allow for tag names to be aliased, tag groups to be restructured, and asset models to be created.

Read Existing Metadata Tables

Sometimes your SCADA system and PLCs just don't have all of the metadata you would like to store for a tag. If you already have relational databases that contain tag metadata, Canary can read those tables and incorporate the data dynamically. Best of all, Canary will automatically update the view whenever the table receives new information.  

Regular Expressions Make It Easy

To create rules within a Virtual View, you use regular expressions. RegEx, or regular expressions, are a sequence of special characters that define a search pattern. This powerful tool helps you to use existing logic in your tag naming or metadata and make changes in mass.

Similar to using 'find and replace' in a word processing document, you use RegEx to identify groups of tag names and apply universal changes. If regular expressions are new to you, don't worry; with just a little bit of work you can easily master this tool.

Tag Aliasing & Naming Standardization

Often large organizations struggle to accomplish a unified tag naming system for 100% of their facilities.  There always seems to be a few locations that have an older naming strategy that doesn’t quite fit or would be too costly to justify updating.  The Virtual Views tool can help.

Without impacting the historical record or requiring changes at either the device or SCADA level, you can alias tag names or edit naming structure to fit a corporate tag naming policy. Since everything is done virtually, changes are easy to make, and have no long-term consequences.

Asset Modeling

Organizing your tags into assets just became a lot easier and won't require ongoing work even when new tags come into your system.  The same Views tool that is used for tag aliasing can also be used to apply regular expression rules to create asset groups.  You can choose to define model rules based on logic within your tag names themselves, or upload meta data tables from SQL databases or CSV files to the Canary System and identify assets based on the information you already have.

Since all asset modeling is done in a virtual data model, a single tag within the Historian can belong to multiple asset models. This allows for tiered asset models with “parent-child” relationships, as well as flat models for easily comparing assets across your entire organization. 

Additionally, you can create specialty models for clients based on the job they are trying to accomplish.  For instance, if a vendor needs to have access to a series of pumps that they service, easily create a model of just those pumps and limit their database access to only their equipment.  This becomes extremely beneficial to business units that may only want to see data surrounding production values and ignore any data that is geared more to process.

When you add new tags to your Historian, your asset model rules automatically scan, identify, and create new assets from those tags.  Within 5 minutes of adding your tags, your models will populate with the new assets.  Best of all, none of your modeling requires any additional licensing since it never duplicates the historical data or requires new tags to be created.