Girish Mahajan (Editor)

FactorySQL

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FactorySQL

FactorySQL is an OPC based Middleware product by Inductive Automation that bridges the gap between industrial PLCs and SQL Databases. FactorySQL is a drag and drop .NET application that runs as a Windows service. FactorySQL version 1.0 was released in 2003 and deprecated at version 4 in 2010 with the release of Ignition Inductive Automation offers the OPC-UA module for free. As of January 2013, FactorySQL is still being sold and supported.

Contents

Groups and Items

FactorySQL configuration is done with standard Groups. This unit of configuration can morph from a historical logger, real-time status and control synchronizer, downtime tracker, recipe manager, etc. The group configuration defines the database connection, table, timing options, triggering options, and "direction". Direction defines whether read or write operations come from or go to the OPC server from the SQL database. "Bidirectional" allows a change from either side to be written to the other. Groups contain Items. Items are dragged from an OPC browsing tree or manually created. Each item represents a fully qualified OPC path along with a column name in the SQL database. Items also contain scaling options, OPC information, and other modes of operation.

Features

Features listed from vendor web site.

  • Easy Browsing Browse OPC servers from navigation tree.
  • Drag & Drop Configuration Drag and drop tags from OPC browser to groups
  • Bi-Directional Data Transfer Transfer data between PLCs and Databases, with a full range of options: timers, counters, triggers, and handshakes
  • Built in Email Alerts
  • Simple Group Visualization Visual indication of group status including running, stopped, or error status
  • Stored Procedure Group Map OPCdata to and from SQL stored procedure parameters.
  • Block Data Group mirror large blocks of OPC data in an SQL database through the use of array read and writes.
  • Remote Configuration Group configuration over the network via TCP connection.
  • Supports Most PLCs and Database Systems Support nearly every OPC compliant PLC and ODBC compliant SQL database.
  • Redundancy Supports primary and backup failover modes.
  • SQLTags Proprietary means to "turn any SQL database into a high-performance industrial tag database".

    • History

    FactorySQL was initially written to be a drag and drop OPC to SQL data logger. Functionality was introduced to become a Transaction Manager and Industrial Historian.

    FactorySQL introduced SQLTags support with version 4.1 in December 2007.

    References

    FactorySQL Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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