Overview

FrameworX includes enhancements specifically designed to leverage Canary History, a time-series database that provides high speed performance and friendly configuration tools. Canary Historian Integration features:

  • Native Solution Historian: Canary Historian embeds in the platform easily as if were a native tool. Solutions can use it in conjunction with the exhisting build-in SQL Historian.
  • Free 100 Canary Points 
  • The first 100 Canary Historian points are included free of charge. Upgrade options available for larger systems.
  • Create Canary Points directly at Designer: no need to use or lear other tools than FrameworX Solution Designer. 
  • Simplified license management: Request license upgrades directly from FrameworX.
  • Out of Box TrendChart Monitor: zero configuration required, out-of-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, 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. A high-performance historian designed for large-scale applications that handle large 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?

Solution can use both system concurrently. Performance on SQL storage increase over years, but can't reach the speed and storage that a database specifically designed for time-series data, like Canary, can deliver. Use Canary for the tags that requires high speed and/or long time retention. Keep in SQL the ones that the retrieval and storage requirements can be delivered with the SQL storage. 

Trend Charts on Displays, Scripts, all FrameworX modules uses data abstraction layers, so there is no changes on 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, where 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 various Framework Modules 

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

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 Storage Location. 
  2. at Historian → HistorianTables, define virtual tables to control writing and retrieving data.
  3. Map the tags at Historian → HistorianTags.

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

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 Communication driver.

TagProvider Module

Configuring TagProvider using Canary.

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

→ Read about Unified Namespaces, or Read about the specific Canary TagProvider

Displays and Scripts Modules

Displays and Scripts,  with not addition configuration, will query Canary Historian, in using Tags that were previously connected with Canary using the Historian Module. 

Examples of automted usage:

In Displays TendCharts. See TrendCharts. 

In Displays, using the PlayBack feature .See PlayBack example.

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

In this section: