Features

The Connectivity features provide various options to connect to external data sources such as PLCs, OPC servers, databases, MQTT brokers, Kafka topics, and Aspen InfoPlus.21 (IP.21) systems via IP.21 gRPC. Datasource objects support a wide range of communication protocols, while Bridge Interfaces enable vendor-specific integrations with systems such as the AVEVA PI System, Uniformance PHD, Siemens Simatic Batch, and Mettler-Toledo LabX.

The Servers section describes how AspenTech Inmation Nodes have embedded server capabilities that enable clients to connect to the system, browse the namespace, and retrieve data. This includes the WebServer, which is the primary connection point used by WebStudio, as well as embedded OPC UA and OPC COM servers.

The Data Transfer features cover the movement of historical data into and out of the system. This includes importing history from external historians, transferring data between AspenTech Inmation systems, backfilling history gaps, and troubleshooting transfer operations.

The system Historian stores and manages large volumes of VQT (Value, Quality, Timestamp) and Alarms & Events data. It is built on MongoDB and leverages its scalability features including sharding and Replica Sets. Custom Data Stores are organized into Data Store Sets to enable redundant storage, increased data availability, and improved access times. Fine-grained purging options allow storage space to be managed effectively.

The Lua Scripting section describes how AspenTech Inmation OT DataFabric provides an embedded scripting engine that supports both mathematical operations on data and configurational operations on the system. Scripts are written in the Lua language, which offers exceptional performance when embedded in the C++ backend. Use cases range from simple calculations and data transformations to creating, updating, and deleting objects across the system model trees.

The Alarms and Events feature supports the OPC Alarms & Events (A&E) standard and extends it with additional functionality to create, handle, and historize alarms and events. An OPC A&E client is provided, and objects can be used to generate alarms and events from non-OPC A&E sources while still conforming to the OPC standard.

The Performance Counters feature includes built-in counters on selected objects to enable monitoring of memory usage, data flow, buffering, historization throughput, and more. Performance counter data can be viewed in the Object Lens of WebStudio or accessed programmatically via the Lua Scripting API.