Logix Driver vs ControlLogix driver tag paths

General Discussion
1

I was merging projects with another developer and found that the tag paths between the Logix Driver and the ControlLogix Driver don’t match up when it comes to Program tags vs Controller tags. The ControlLogix Driver seems to favor Program Tags (by not including “Program:”), but has extra parts to the path for arrays. The Logix Driver handles arrays better, but wants to add “Program:” to my Program tags.

ControlLogix Driver
ns=1;s=[211_POAA]BS101.Batch_Status.Batch_Status[0]
ns=1;s=[211_POAA]Global.N9.N9[0]

Logix Driver
ns=1;s=[211_POAA]Program:BS101.Batch_Status[0]
ns=1;s=[211_POAA]N9[0]

Is there a way to have one behave the same as the other? Ideally, it would omit the “Program:” part and handle arrays without the extra parts.

2

The paths are different because the newer Logix driver fixes an ambiguity in the addressing scheme of the old driver and the mirror (or closely mirror) what you find in the PLC and/or Studio 5000. There’s no way to change the path format on either driver.

It’s possible to use the newer driver against all firmware revisions, including v20 and prior, but the performance isn’t good enough in most cases because it has to fallback to using symbolic addressing. This is something I’m hoping we can improve in the future, and once the performance matches, we can deprecate the old driver.

3

Thanks! That helps. It also lets me know we should stick with the ControlLogix driver in this case as the processor is at v20. And we’ll also know what we need to do whenever it gets upgraded.

I guess without both of the “Program:” or “Global” parts, it would be difficult to tell the difference if you have a Controller tag named the same as a program (probably a bad idea to do that anyway!)

Thanks for the reply!

4

[quote=“Kraenbring”]I guess without both of the “Program:” or “Global” parts, it would be difficult to tell the difference if you have a Controller tag named the same as a program (probably a bad idea to do that anyway!)
[/quote]

Yes, exactly! That is one of the ambiguities I’m talking about. With the new driver we just opted to remove all ambiguities entirely as well as mirror what you would expect the tag path to be, based on what you see in RSLogix/Studio5000.