Proficy Interface?

Ignition
1

Hello All,

I have a customer who wants to use Proficy as their historian. They are currently using it to grab & store data from the PLCs in parallel with the existing SCADA package which we are planning to upgrade to Ignition. (They lost confidence in the existing SCADA system a couple years ago as their primary historian)

During a scope review when I said we'd be storing history to SQL, they said well Proficy is their historian of record now and want to know if we can us it instead.

I'm still planning on using SQL for recipe management, and run report header information which they are ok with, they just want to integrate Proficy as the historian.

I'm out of my depth with this question having only a vague idea of Proficy, so I thought I'd ask here and see what all your collective experience can tell me.

I know there's a way to add other databases by creating a JDBC driver and importing a JAR file but a quick google search revealed no useful links to anything.

We are needing 3 basic elements - long term history storage, ability to view the history on trend screens, pull history into a run report as-needed.

I suppose I could leave the Proficy-PLC connection as-is and not set up Ignition Historian, but then I think I'd have a heck of a time trying to wrangle data into power chart, and reports no?

Appreciate anything anyone can share. Thanks!

2

The only thing I found when searching is you would need an ADO-JDBC Bridge (middleware).

3

If you want "managable" for your 3 requirements it'd be best to do it in Ignition (with your SQL DB) if that is the SCADA you choose.

4

Proficy Historian is old tech and is doesn't handle some things with the best stability (though it handles some other things very well). For example, if you open too many instances of their config application, the whole historian crashes... It is also much more expensive than a SQL solution.

But if you can't talk them out of it:

Newer versions of the historian provide a web server that comes with a web interface but also a REST API. That API is probably your best bet for getting data out of it for use in Ignition. Be careful though, as spinning up too many simultaneous connections to that API can also crash the entire historian... (don't ask me how I know).

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