Overview

The platform includes enhancements specifically designed to leverage Canary History, a time-series database that provides high speed performance and friendly configuration tools. This integration includes:

  • Native Solution Historian: Canary Historian embeds in the platform easily as if it were a native tool. Solutions can use it in conjunction with the existing built-in SQL Historian.

  • Free 100 Canary Points: The first 100 Canary Historian points are included free of charge. Upgrade options are available for larger systems.

  • Create Canary Points directly at Designer: No need to use or learn other tools than FrameworX Solution Designer.

  • Simplified License Management: Request license upgrades directly from FrameworX.

  • Out of Box TrendChart Monitor: Zero configuration is required; an out-of-the-box TrendChart monitor for Canary Historian tags.

  • Edge Data Collector: Any of the 70+ communication protocols is now a Data Collector for Canary Historian, with Store and Forward support.

  • Canary Driver and TagProvider: Connection with other Canary Historian instances, either mapping to Local Tags or using dynamic referencing, with tunneling features included.

On this page:

About Canary

What is the Canary Historian?

Canary Historian is a time series database built for industrial automation. It is a high-performance historian designed for large-scale applications that handle substantial volumes of data writing. It provides scalability and enables efficient management of high-volume write operations. Its design supports extensive dataset analysis within time contexts for effective trend identification, avoiding the constraints of relational schemas. Canary's architecture balances speed, accuracy, and volume, making it an ideal choice for specialized time series data management needs.

When to use Canary Historian or the built-in SQL Historian?

Solutions can use both systems concurrently. Performance on SQL storage has increased over the years, but it cannot reach the speed and storage capabilities that a database specifically designed for time-series data, like Canary, can deliver. Use Canary for the tags that require high speed and/or long time retention. Keep those in SQL where the retrieval and storage requirements can be managed with SQL storage.

Using Multiple Historians

Trend Charts on Displays, Scripts, and all other modules use data abstraction layers, so there are no changes to the remaining configuration of the solution when you decide to modify the configuration of tags from using one historian to another.

Installation

The software platform should be installed and, when necessary, licensed.

Licensing Canary Historian

  1. Go to Solution Manager and navigate to 'Your License / License Information / Canary Historian'.
  2. Request a license by clicking 'Request License'. Fill in the 'Name', 'Company', and 'Email' fields to generate the Serial Number, then click 'Request'.
  3. Open the Canary Admin Tool, proceed to 'Home / Licenses', and select 'Local / Add license through the internet'. Enter the required details ('Name', 'Company', 'Serial Number', 'Email', 'Quantity') and check the 'Canary Historian' option. Click 'GET LICENSE'.
  4. Upon receiving the License Key, confirm by clicking 'OK'. To verify the license, navigate to 'Solution Manager / Your License' and refresh the information by clicking the 'Refresh' button. The message should change to "Canary Historian is licensed."

Canary Admin Tool configuration

Set up the Sender's EndPoints and access the Receiver's EndPoints in the Canary Admin Tool.

Creating Solution and Enabling Canary Historian

  1. In Solution Manager, create a solution (file .dbsln) and open it in the Solution Designer.
  2. Access 'Solution / Settings / Target Platform and License', enable Canary Historian, and select the desired tag range (500, 1500, 5000, 15000, or Unlimited).

Done! The initial configuration is finished.

Modules' Connections

Canary Historian can be used in different ways by the various modules.

Historian: Uses Canary as a Storage Location for archiving or retrieving HistorianTags.

Devices: Read and Write to external Canary Historian Server with the Device Module.

TagProvider:  Map external Canary Historian Server to dynamic integration of its data and structures. 

Displays and Scripts: No custom configuration is required, TrendCharts will use Canary Historian Data Automatically if available.

Historian Module

Configuring Historian using Canary

  1. At Historian → StorageLocations, include Canary as a StorageLocation. 
  2. At Historian → HistorianTables, define virtual tables will control writing and retrieving data.
  3. Map the tags at Historian → HistorianTags.

→ Read about the Historian Module.

Device Module

Configuring Devices using Canary.

  1. Navigate to 'Devices → Channels' and select a protocol (Canary) to create a Channel.
  2. Navigate to  'Devices → Nodes', create a Node linked to that Channel.
  3. Map the tags at 'Devices → Points'.

→ Read about the Devices Module, or Read about the specific Canary Labs Communication driver.

TagProvider Module

Configuring TagProvider using Canary.

  1. At Unified Namespace → TagProvider Connections, create a connection to a Canary Historian.
  2. At Unified Namespace → AssetTree, add Canary data in the AssetTree. 
  3. Use Canary data in any module using the syntax Asset("<AssetPath>")

→ Read about Unified Namespaces

→ Read about the specific Canary Labs TagProvider

Displays and Scripts

Displays and Scripts, with no additional configuration, will query Canary Historian when using tags that were previously connected with Canary using the Historian Module.

Examples of the automated usage:

In Displays TendCharts. See TrendChart Control.

In Scripts, using the Historian Tables method to query data. See Historian Runtime Attributes.

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