I’d like to see the provider model you’ve used for SQLTags implemented with transactions as well. When using a Database Driving/Database Provider with SQLTags, you’re provided with multiple points-of-expansion, a wonderful feature IMHO. I’d love to see that same functionality carried over to transactions.
Perhaps you could extend your request with more information about what you’d like to see… what kind of format/feed back would you want? The ability to define multiple address/value pairs to write to OPC as a group with some sort of result feedback? Something more complex?
I’m interested in exploring something like this, but am curious as to what you have in mind, more specifically.
Regards,
With SQLTags, I can create SQLTags on the fly, edit meta properties, etc. I’ve got access to all information pertaining to a SQLTag from a database, a nice benefit considering myself and a handful of my co-workers are SQL-saavy.
With transactions, I can have that same level of flexibility. I can create transaction groups on the fly, enable or disable them, add or remove group items, adjust an item’s expression, etc. With these options available, I think it’ll initiate a lot of creative thinking and solutions.
I’ve requested similar flexibility a while back before Ignition and hinted at it again before the SDK was released. I think stretching the provider model to transactions could provide some of the flexibility I was asking about a while back.
An example … I’d like to create a tag logging system. I want to build an interface that’d essentially allow users to create transactions. A transaction can be created, populated with items, given a trigger, and put into commission immediately. Currently, I’ve got a solution that lets users select tags for logging, but everything’s built around a single transaction I’ve created in the designer. I can’t allow the user to select more tags than I’ve prepared for in the transaction. A provider model would let me create additional group items on the fly. I can provide the example if it’d help clarify.
Thanks in advance for hearing me out!
I was thinking about this, and don’t think it would be too hard. Basically, you can see from the XML export that group configuration is basically just Key/Value pairs anyhow, with some basic structure for arrays that could probably be encoded fairly easily in a database structure similar to SQLTags.
Then I was thinking of a module plugin that added a new type of “folder” that monitored these tables in the specified data connection and showed them in a read-only fashion (I suppose, could be fully bi-directional) and ran them.
I can’t give any real time line on this, but what should really happen is that we should take a look at polishing up the transaction group portion of the module sdk, and then I should write this as a plugin example. Cleaning up the SDK is something I hope to get involved in by the end of the year, so we’ll see.
Regards,
I think that’d be a reasonable approach. I’d tackle it myself as I’ve been looking for a reason to finally dig into the SDK … unfortunately, I never have enough time available to do so!
Can you make an XML Schema for the transaction group exports available?