Release Notes for system:inmation 1.54

General improvements to Production Tracking functionality and the Batch Tracker object.

Improvements have been made to the History Transfer workflow to improve performance, reliability and efficiency. The History Transporter and History Controller objects have undergone significant enhancements to improve history transfer from OPC UA servers and give more control in regards to monitoring and status updates.

Improvements made to prevent slowdowns with the Object Properties panel when opening script editor displays. Further improvements have also been made to the Calendar display.

Improvements made to Web API endpoints when reading from OPC UA and DA VQT items. The Annotate and Update Batch Production Record endpoints have also been updated to be consistent with other Web API functionality.

Production events related to objects in the ISA-95 model can be subscribed to using the BPR Publisher (Batch Production Records Publisher)object. This object is created below equipment objects in the ISA-95 model. Subscription will inform users of changes to associated Batch Production Records and can be accessed by external clients using the Web API and the inmation API clients.

Updates and textual annotations can now be added to Batch Production Records using Lua and the Web API. Also implemented is the ability to prohibit updates on Batch Records by applying a field to the Batch Record in the form of a new Batch Characteristic.

The HistoryTransporter class has been fully revamped and optimized for efficiency and transparency. It processes Tag Context Data, Deep History, Continuous (Near-Time) History and Snapshots in parallel in each periodic cycle. Additionally, it now allows to fetch history from any external data source not supported by the standard implementation for OSI PI (PI-SDK), AspenTech IP.21 (SQLplus) and any OPC-compliant Historian. For other systems, user-provided scripts can be embedded with the HistoryTransporter to fetch Tag Context, Deep and Near-Time History and Snapshots in a custom manner. HistoryTransporter objects can now be created as top-level objects below a particular Connector in the I/O Model.

The Batch Record datasource can be used to fetch Batch Records from either AspenTech Batch.21/APRM or OSI PI either via PI-Batch or Event Frame-based data acquisition. The class has now been connected to the ISA-S88 compliant Production Tracking Data Store, enabling legacy and proprietary batch documents to be converted into fully S88-compliant Batch Production Records. system:inmation can concentrate BPRs from any production facility into a global repository which then serves for internal and external analytics and also as a foundation for "Product Release by Exception" (automated release management).

Extensions to the Lua API and History transfer chain have been made to enable attribute querying on external OPC HDA and UA datasources. The getattributesex() Lua function is fully integrated into the HistoryTransporter object.

KPI objects can now be configured to run custom calculations or data transformations on data queried from items in the system. Using custom Lua scripts the ReadValue, ReadHistory, and ReadHistoryAtTime queries can be overloaded to perform user defined transformations on the data. The transformed data will then be displayed on the Visual KPI web browser display.

The Cloud Sink Item is used to transfer data from system:inmation to cloud based systems. Interfaces using the Apache Kafka and MQTT protocols are supported, enabling connection to Microsoft Azure hubs, Google Cloud and Amazon AWS cloud services.

Improvements to the DataStudio Calendar display to better reflect the Equipment States and Start and End times for production events. Other general display improvements also made.

The production tracking chain has been improved to extend the Batch Production Record recording in line with the ISA-88 standard. This includes an increased number of BatchField codings for Batch Production Records.

The Batch Record Datasource functionality has been extended to include field entries relating to cleaning, waste, downtime and energy consumption (these are included in the BatchField codings).