Working with OPC HDA Collector

Important: You do not have the latest version of Historian! You are missing out on the newest capabilities and enhanced security. For information on all the latest features, see the Historian product page. For more information on upgrades, contact your GE Digital sales agent or e-mail GE Digital Sales Support. For the most up-to-date documentation, go here.

Installing an OPC HDA Collector

The OPC HDA Collector can be found in the directory named Collectors in the Historian software DVD media. The OPC HDA Collector is delivered as a Windows installer.
Note: If you are upgrading an OPC HDA Collector, ensure the following:
  • the service is stopped
  • the services control panel is closed
  • no open file handles are open by the service
  • ProcessExplorer is not running
  • the Event Viewer is closed

To install an OPC HDA Collector:

  1. Insert the Historian install DVD on the computer you designate as a collector node and click on Historian Collectors.
    The Choose the Collector(s) to install page appears
  2. Select the OPC HDA Collector check box. Click Next.
    The Source Server Configuration screen appears with a listing of locally installed OPC HDA Servers.
  3. Select the check box for the OPC HDA Server you want to use. Click Next.
    The Source Server Configuration screen allows you to Enter the Remote OPC HDA Server Details.
  4. Enter the machine name where the OPC HDA Server is installed and the associated ProgID. The OPC HDA Server ProgID is provided by your OPC HDA Server vendor.
    Note:
    • Be sure to enter the correct ProgID or the server connection will fail.
    • For the remote connection to work correctly, you must provide DCOM settings for both the OPC HDA server machine and the OPC HDA Collector machine.
    • To add more than one OPC HDA Server, place your cursor in the ProgID text box and press the Enter button. Then, type in the machine name and ProgID for that OPC HDA Server.
    • To delete the added OPC HDA Server detail, select the row that contains the Machine Name and ProgID and then click the Delete button.

    The Is Your Destination a Historian or the Predix Cloud? screen appears. This identifies the destination that is to receive the pushed data.

  5. Select Historian 7.1 and click Next.
    If you select Predix Cloud as the destination, refer to Bi-Modal Collectors and Collector Toolkit for Cloud information and related configuration settings.
  6. Enter the name of the Historian Server and click Next.

    The installer indicates that it is ready to install this collector.

  7. Click Install.

    The installation begins and a success message appears when the installation completes.

Uninstalling the OPC HDA Collector

  1. Navigate from the Control Panel to Programs and Features.
  2. Click Uninstall or Change a Program.
  3. Select Historian Collectors.

Summary of OPC HDA Collector Features

The OPC HDA Collector is a 64-bit compatible collector and it does not support 32-bit operating systems. The following table outlines the features of the OPC HDA Collector.

Feature Capability
Browse Source for Tags Yes (on an OPC HDA Server that supports browsing)
Browse Source for Tag Attributes Yes
Polled Collection No
Minimum Poll Interval NA
Unsolicited Collection Yes

If you are using an OPC HDA Collector with unsolicited data collection and have collector compression disabled, all new values should produce an exception. When the OPC HDA Collector is doing unsolicited collection, the deadband percentage is determined by the collector deadband percent. You can only configure the collector deadband percent by enabling compression.
Timestamp Resolution 1ms
Accept Device Timestamps Yes
Floating Point Data Yes
Integer Data Yes
String Data Yes
Binary Data Yes
Python Expression Tags No
Note: You must set the Time Assigned by field to Source if you have unsolicited tags getting data from an OPC HDA Collector.

Tag Attributes Available in Browse (OPC HDA Collectors)

The following table outlines the tag attributes available when browsing.

Attribute Capability
Tagname Yes
Source Address Yes
Engineering Unit Description Yes,varies by OPC UA Server vendor.
Data Type Yes. See Data Types.
Hi Engineering Units Yes, varies by OPC UA Server vendor.
Lo Engineering Units Yes, varies by OPC UA Server vendor.
Hi Scale No
Lo Scale No
Is Array Tag Yes
Note: While some of these attributes are queried on a browse, they are not shown in the browse interface. These attributes are used when adding a tag, but whether all attributes come from the server or not is not visible to you.

Data Types

The following table lists the data types recommended for use with Historian.

OPC HDA Collector Data Type Recommended Data Type in Historian
I1- 16 bit signed integer Single Integer
I4- 32 bit signed integer Double Integer
R8- 64 bit double float Single Float
UI2- 16 bit unsigned single integer Double Float
UI4- 32 bit unsigned double integer Unsigned Integer
UI8- 64 bit unsigned quad integer Unsigned Double Integer
I8- 64 bit quad integer Quad Integer
BSTR Variable Sting
BOOL Boolean
I1- 8 bit single integer Byte
Note: The OPC HDA Collector requests data from the OPC HDA server in the native data type. The OPC HDA collector then converts the received value to a Historian Data Type before sending it to the data archiver.

Configuration Tab for an OPC HDA Collector

To display the Configuration Tab for an OPC HDA Collector, select an OPC HDA Collector from the list on the left of the Administrator Tool Collectors section and click the Configuration Tab. The following screen appears.

Enter the value for the OPC HDA Collector-specific field parameters as described in Configuration of OPC HDA Collector-Specific Fields.

Note: Enable the CreateOfflineArchives flag in the Destination Historian as the OPC HDA Collector pushes the old data. This can be set through the SDK sample, which is part of the Historian Client tool, and you can also set this through the system API programs. Refer to the Historian SDK help for more information.

Configuration of OPC HDA Collector-Specific Fields

Enter the value for the OPC HDA Collector-specific field parameters through the OPC HDA Collector Maintenance - Configuration tab of the Historian Administrator.

Descriptions for collector-specific fields are listed in the following table.

Note: If the following fields are updated, then the collector must be restarted for the update to take effect.
Field Description
OPC HDA Server This field represents the OPC HDA Server ProgID to which the collector connects. By default, it points to the OPC HDA server ProgID that was entered at the time of installation.
Recovery Time (in hours) This field is used by the collector on start up to get the specified number of hours of data of the added tags from the OPC HDA server, and then pushes the data to Historian.
  • Min Time = 1 hour
  • Max Time = 150 hour. By default, the Max Time field is set to 24 hours.

Data Recovery

This topic explains auto and manual data recovery.
Note: It is recommended that the collector for which the data recovery is intended is in the same time zone as the server. If there is a mismatch, there is a possibility that data recovery will be incomplete.

Auto Data Recovery

When the auto recovery logic is executed, the collector first determines how long it has been since the last write. It compares the current time to data in the registry key LastSampleWriteTime, which stores the last time data was written to the archive. The collector compares this to the Max Recovery Time that is specified in the user settings and performs a raw data query on the shorter of these two periods. Then it takes the shorter of these two and do a raw data query for all tags. It then processes the returned samples in sequential order based on time.

For example, if the collector was shut down for 8 hours, but Max Recovery Time was 4 hours, only 4 hours of data would be recovered.

Recovery logic places an end-of-collection marker at the point in time where the collector was shut down. This end-of-collection marker may or may not be there once the recovery is complete. As part of recovery logic, if recovery data point time exactly at that timestamp where the end-of-collection marker is there, then it is overwritten with the recovered good data.

Manual Data Recovery

Manual recovery can be performed from the Historian Administrator. Initiate manual recovery by following these steps:

To initiate manual data recovery:

  1. In the Historian Administrator, select the OPC HDA collector.
  2. Click Recalculate. The Recalulate dialog appears.
  3. Enter start and end time and choose all or selected tags based on criteria from Recalculate window.
  4. Click Recalculate.
    Once manual recalculation starts, the collector recovers selected tags data from OPC HDA server to GE Historian between start time and end time.

    It is advised to choose small time intervals, so that load on OPC HDA server/collector will be reduced.

    At the time of recovery, if the connection to OPC HDA Server is lost, and if the Reconnect mechanism is enabled, the collector will try to connect to the server and pull the data once connection re-establishes.

    Manual recalculate is for filling the data gaps not for filling old data.

    For example:

    Assume that the collector is connected to GE Historian for the first time today and the archive was created at 10 am. The user initiates manual recalculation from 1am to 2 am. For that time interval, the archives were not even created. With respect to Historian it is old unknown data and the data write fails. If there is a data gap between 1pm to 2 pm, manual recalculation successfully fills the data gap.

Hierarchical Browsing

If your OPC HDA Server supports hierarchical organization of your tags in a tree structure, then Historian will use the server's hierarchy when browsing an OPC HDA Collector in the Non-Web Administrator.

  1. Browse your OPC HDA data source for new tags.
    From the Collector list, select the OPC HDA Collector you wish to browse. A hierarchical tree appears in the Browse Results window.
  2. To limit the displayed tags to only those that are not collected, from the Show Only list select Source Tags Not Collected.
  3. To limit the displayed tags to match a tag name or tag description, enter the value to match in the Source Tag Name or Description text boxes.
  4. Navigate to the node in the tree you want to browse, and then click Browse. The tags within the selected portion of the OPC UA DA tag hierarchy will be displayed.
    • To browse automatically, select the AutoBrowse checkbox. The available tags display in the Browse Results window whenever a node is selected in the tree.
    • The Show All Children option is not supported.
  5. Select the tag(s) you want to add to Historian, and click Add Selected Tags. Collected tags appear in black text in the tag list.

Remote Setup Prerequisite

The OPC HDA Collector and OPC HDA server support remote connectivity. If the OPC HDA server and collector are on different machine, make sure following are performed:

  • The DCOM setting has to be provided for both the OPC HDA server and the OPC HDA Collector machines.
  • Before starting the OPC HDA Collector service, ensure that "NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM" has "SysAdmin" privileges.

Reconnecting to the OPC HDA Server

The OPC HDA Collector supports auto reconnect to the OPC HDA Server. If the connectivity between the OPC HDA server and the collector is down due to network connectivity issues, the collector will auto reconnect to the server when the server is back and running. The collector polls for the server connection for a set timer of every 5 seconds.

To enable Auto Reconnect to the OPC HDA Server:

  1. From the Start menu, click Run and type Regedit. Then, click OK. The Registry Editor appears.
  2. Open the key folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GE Digital\iHistorian\Services\ OPCHDACollector.
  3. Locate the Key created with the ProgID of the OPC HDA server, which you entered while installing the OPC HDA Collector.
  4. Create a new DWORD labelled, EnableOPCHDAReconnect.
  5. Enter the decimal value 1.
    Note: If this registry is not created and set to a value of 1, then the Auto Reconnect functionality will not be enabled.

Configuring the Timer

  1. From the Start menu, click Run and type Regedit. Then, click OK. The Registry Editor appears.
  2. Open the key folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GE Digital\iHistorian\Services\OPCHDACollector.
  3. Locate the Key created with the ProgID of the OPC HDA server, which you entered while installing the OPC HDA Collector.
  4. Create a new DWORD labelled, OPCReconnectInterval.
  5. Enter a decimal value greater than 5. This value represents the number of seconds for the collector to wait before trying to re-connect to the OPC HDA Server. Click OK, and then edit the Registry Editor.
    • MinValue = 5 seconds (default)
    • MaxValue = 60 seconds
  6. Click OK, and then edit the Registry Editor.
  7. Restart the OPC HDA Collector for the change to take effect.

Offline Configuration

This section contains a sample offline XML file that is located in the install directory: \Program Files\GE Digital\Historian OPC HDA Collector\Config\OPCHDA_Offline_Config.xml.

When multiple instances of the OPC HDA Collector are installed in single machine, a different offline XML file must be created with a unique name for each service. Also, the path of the XML file must be updated in the registry OfflineTagConfigurationFile.

Updating the Registry

  1. From the Start menu, click Run, type Regedit, and then click OK. The Registry editor appears.
  2. Open the following key folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GE Digital\iHistorian\Services\OPCHDACollector\.
  3. Locate the Key created with the ProgID of the OPC HDA server, which you entered during the installation of the OPC HDA Collector.
  4. Locate the registry OfflineTagConfigurationFile.
  5. Enter the full path of the offline XML file. For example, c:\ Program Files\GE Digital\Historian OPC HDA Collector\Config\OPCHDA_Kepware_Offline_Config.xml.
  6. Restart the OPC HDA Collector for the change to take effect.