Data Historian is a specialized time series database for industrial data in operational technology (OT) environment. In the context of operation technology (OT), historian is used to capture & store large volums of production data, process data and operation. These data are generated by equipment or machine that reside on the shopfloor.
Data historian will be placed at site level in order to say closed to the shopfloor system such as SCADA/PLCs/ICSS/DCS and often sit on DMZ(demilitarized zone) network
For an organization with multiple production sites, multiple data historian will be rolled out per sites. These site level data historians are then will be integrated into enterprise historian which located at HQ (headquarter).
Leading five enterprise historian solution for both process and discrete manufacturing industry on the market are: Aveva PI System (formerly known as Osisoft PI system), GE Proficy Historian, Yokogawa Exaquantum, Honeywell Uniformance ( PHD/process hisotirian database) & Siemens(Simatic Process Historian).
Lets take a look how these solution can fit into enterprise historian key capabilities.
Key Capabilities
Below are the key capabilities/feature criteria of a software that can be categorized into enterprise historian.
- Consume data from one or more data historians server securely and has bi-directional controll access
- Non Instrusive Data Acquisition, not distrupting safety/operation/production. Any kind of Data retrieval such as event, alarm, production data, process data or operational data from data historian into enterprise historian must not distrupt with existing control or safety system
- Data exchange between enterprise data historian with surroundings application or consumer through various protocol
- Production/operational data contextualization with asset information
- Production/operational data contextualization with operational/downstream workflow information
- Data validation (basic validation such as value range & format)for any incoming production or operational data (event/alarm) to the enterprise historian from data historian.
- Data governance (data ownership, stewardship, role based access control, platform based access control)
- Buffered data transmission system during data connectivity issues to ensure no data losses
- Disaster recovery system
- Integration support with leading IT-OT convergence protocol such as OPC-UA alongside with the buffering mechanism
- Deployable at lvl 4 network and capable to connect securely with data historian at level 3. Aligned with ISA95 architecture
- Store and manage structured data(time-stamped and numerical data from SCADA/PLCs/DCS/MES) and semi-structured data (eg: sensor data with flexible attribute). Well known data format to handle semi structured data is JSON.
(1) Data Consumption from multiple data historian
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | PI System Connector enable PI to PI data exchange/transfer |
| GE Proficy Historian | Plant historian will be synchronized into central historian |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaquantum to exaquantum process data integration is possible through exaquantum open internet (NTPP007) |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | redudancy and mirroring are possible, however for multisite synchronization it require ETL, automated sync is not mentioned between multiple process historian database |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Multi site honeywell uniformance historian can be synchronized/integrated |
(2) Non Instrusive Data Acquisition, not distrupting safety/operation/production
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | PI Can be hosted DMZ Network to ensure read only access connections can be established from authorized client |
| GE Proficy | GE proficy can be deployed using on premises configuration, ensuring flexible network design to ensure secure data transmission |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaquantum is ran on top of virtualization platform, can be deployed on various network architecture (including dmz) |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | Can be hosted on virtualized environment |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Uniformance historian can be deployed on virtualized environment |
(3) Data exchange with surrounding downstream applications
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | Various data transfer from Aveva PI system to surroundings are avaiable. (push) PI Connector, RestAPI, PI Integrator |
| GE Proficy | RestAPI & SDK is available to access the historian data |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Multiple data exposure method are available from API / oleDB / OPC Classic / OPC UA |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | SQL Server reporting services can be integrated to process historian databases or the data can also be accessed through OPC UA |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Data sharing through honeywell pulse |
(4) Contextualization: Asset information
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | PI Asset Framework can enrich the incoming telemetry data with asset information |
| GE Proficy | GE proficy historian object model will help to structurize the asset hierarchy |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Asset information/hierarchy will be fed into exaquantum central database |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | Context information can be added to the process data |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | asset and business related data can be enriched to the honeywell uniformance historian through consolidated event journal |
(5) Contextualization: Operational information
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | Aveva Event Frame in AF (Asset Framework) can enrich time series data with relevant data that not limited to asset data, for example: shift information, operator information |
| GE Proficy | operational data can be added on the object model |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | operational data from ERP or MES or MOM can be integrated into exaquantum central databases |
| Siemens Simatic | operational data context can be added to the time variant value sequences |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | operational data can be contextualized |
(6) Data validation
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | All data coming from PLCs/scada/DCS will be filtered through PI Connector/Interface |
| GE Proficy | Data filtering can be applied using calculation collector |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Various data handling including data filtering is supported |
| Siemens Simatic | Data filtering & calculation during aggregation is supported |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Engineering calculation can be applied on the historian |
(7) Data Governance (Access control/ownership, stewardship)
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | Data sharing through aveva connect can be configured for the authorized user/system |
| GE Proficy | RBAC is supported through GE proficy hub |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaquantum manages access for specific user and role |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | Access control and protection is configureable for various user and role |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | role based access to the uniformance PHD is possible |
(8) Buffered Data Transmission
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | PI to PI data exchange from PI interface to Data Archive is buffered / queued into file when connection is interupted and will be resumed when connection is re-established using FIFO (First in first out) approach |
| GE Proficy | When data collection from various data sources are interupted or GE proficy collector is stopped, the data will be buffered into files |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaopc has built in buffering mechanism when data transmission is interupted |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | To ensure no data loss during transfer, data is buffered on PH Core logging / store / forward cache |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Honeywell uniformance PHD has distributed architecture on the data collection ensuring data will be buffered/queued when signal is lost |
(9) Disaster Recovery System
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | Yes data on the aveva PI data archive can be recovered manually or automatically (buffered) |
| GE Proficy | .IHC and .IHA files can be restored in case system fault is occured |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaquantum will access Exaopc HDA server to retrieve missing data incase system fault is occured |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | Managed historian data on siemens and simantic can be exported and restored/imported |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | Timeseries historian is stored on SQL database and it can be backed up and restored in case system fault occured. OPC UA failover handler is also available |
(10) Support OPC-UA protcol for data exchange
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | UPC-UA protocol is supported through aveva adapter for OPC UA |
| GE Proficy | Various OPC protocol including OPC classic DA, HDA, UA HDA are supported |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | support OPC-UA DA/HDA, OPC UA Alarm |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | OPC UA integration is supported |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | OPC UA is supported |
(11) Deployable at L4 and able to receive data from L3
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | Aveva PI System can be deployed at on premises or virtualzed environment. Making it flexible to be deployed at any network level |
| GE Proficy | GE proficy can be deployed using on premises. Allowing it to be deployed at L4 |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | Exaquantum is ran on top of virtualization platform, allowing it to be deployed on L4 |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | virtualization is supported, ensuring siemens simantic process historian deployedable on secure network design |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | virtualization is supported by honeywell uniformance historian |
(12) Store structured and semi-structured data
| Solution | Listed Feature |
|---|---|
| Aveva PI | semi strucutred data like JSON can be ingested AF (asset framework) for contextualization purposes through OMF (open message format) Adapter |
| GE Proficy | structured data like time series or SQL is supported, however semi structured data liek JSON document are not supported |
| Yokogawa Exaquantum | however semi structured data liek JSON document are not supported |
| Siemens Simatic Process Historian | not mentioned |
| Honeywell Uniformance Historian | uniformance PHD can be deployed on top of cloud and with data lake integration, can support semi structured data |
