We plan to upgrade our old UNIX based data historian. 3 packages are in the picture now: OSI PI, Aspen IP21 and Yokogawa Exaquantum.

All will be connected to Yokogawa and Honeywell DCS. Does anyone have experience selecting 1 out of those 3? What is the most decisive factor for selecting one, if price is not an issue at all? For future development, which one is the one that already prepared technologically?

I am working for a big chemical company is the middle east, so if you have any suggestion or info share, could you give it to me?

Many thanks in advance. You could reply offline to beduto2000 at yahoo. com

 

I know that we looked into PI and IP21 for our recent historian (5 years ago). But price was a factor. But what I can say is I have been really pleased with Aspentech as a vendor. Their web site has support for any problem I've had using the software, from simple how to program SQL to solving design and implementation questions and support team seems to be available at any time. Don't worry, I don't work for Aspentech, but compared to Honeywell's or Matrikon's service they are head and shoulders above.

On a side note, an analyst friend of mine that works for a large pipeline company that uses PI has been having issues trying to get access to their data using ODBC/SQL. As he can only connect to PI using an Excel plugin and he'd prefer to collect data into an RDMS to integrate other data from other databases. But I am unaware if this is an issue with IT, SCADA, or the software itself.

 

Well I will confess to a strong bias to PI. They specialise in this product line and are very DCS neutral.

On a general principle, I would avoid any historian solution by a DCS vendor when you want to connect to a competitors DCS. So if you own a Honeywell DCS I would forget a Yokogawa historian on the grounds you are much more likely to have problems.

There is an ODBC interface available for PI which can be installed on a windows client just like the more normal Excel datalink interface. Also, on the same basis you can make the PI server look like an OPC or OPC-HDA server using a similar interface.

www[.]lymac.co.nz

 

Hi Duto,
Typically I would start by consulting an independant vendor i.e. one that isn't locked into a particlar control system vendor. My main reasoning for this is that if you want to connect a system from vendor B up to a system from vendor A you generally run into vendor politics; if there's a problem who do you turn to for support - Vendor A blames Vendor B and vice versa. Having been down this route before I would tend to steer clear of it on future implementations if possible.

From an independant vendor point of view you are into IP.21 or PI. In real terms there is little to distinguish between them. Aspen perhaps wins with more out of the box user friendly features in its trending client (although PI is closing the gap) whereas PI is more out of the box user friendly at the system administration side.

Much of the work I've been doing over the past few years is converting Aspen systems over to PI. Part of the driver for this has been the ability to do most things within the propriety PI Database, whereas with IP.21 we were required to use other systems such as Oracle to maintain Alarm and Event data or Batch data.

The other factor that has swung the conversion to PI is that we can start to look at optimisation of our processes using a single package. In the past where I have done this with IP.21 we have had to start incorporating other none Aspen products, which adds to the complexity and cost.

The PI Systems we have installed communicate to DCS's and PLC's and we are able to get data out via ODBC into other applications without issue.

With regard to customer support between the two my preference would be for OSI, their website contains much material including training class materials, tech notes, examples, product manuals. I've always found the aspentech website search criteria a bit restricting. In addition I've found more public forums for PI community than that for the AspenTech community (I've only ever found ATIMUS for IP.21 and that isn't open to the general public).

For me the choice would be either PI or IP.21 and the exact choice comes down to the specifics of your requirements. There are some requirements e.g. domain accounts and archiving structure which would favour one or the other product being used.

Regards,
Burnikell

 

we've been using PI for the past 4 years. just a piece of advice - be certain of what u would like to do with the historical data. for trending, i find OSI's Processbook is currently the best in the market. Meanwhile their Datalink is very easy to use and very useful to query data into Excel.

Matrikon's has similar offering ie. Trender for trending and OPC2XL for Excel manipulation (which is similar to Datalink). They still have to work hard to match Processbook, but their OPC2XL is on par with Datalink. Additionally Matrikon's Operational Insight is a good web-based mimic creation program-however since it's built on JAVA platform, i find it a bit "heavy" to load..

Finally, today's trend is to go to use OPC protocol as much as possible. Having said that, i would suggest an OPC server (check out Matrikon or Kepware or any other company) as a "middle man" and PI as historian.

p/s: i DONT work for OSI.

cheers.

 

You may want to consider Instep Software's eDNA.

 

We have worked all three vendors for years and I will say honestly that I have never heard anything that would take any of them out of the running. what you need to do is look at how they log and trend data and what you can do with that data. See what best fits your needs. Each manufacturer has unique features which are really what you must base your decision on.

Fred Loveless
Senior Applicaiton Engineer
Kepware Technologies

 

We realized that this will be a very difficult decision. IP21 and OSI PI are based on proprietary database, which has advantages when they want to process these data in their native application such as retrieving, trend displaying etc but when it comes to connection to other databases which we intend to do such as LIMS and CMMS integration then we MIGHT face a problem, not that big, but stil we will have to struggle on it I believe. Exaquantum which is based on MS SQL has advantage for those database integration but on the other hand processing the data for trend display will be less faster than both.

Now The mgmt decided to put the historian upgrade as part of the DCS upgrade project, then Invensys came into with their INFUSION solution which based on the Wonderware database. Any one know about this infusion? Could you share a little?

Regards
Duto
Control System Engineer
Saudi European Petrochemical company IBN ZAHR

 

Hi Duto,

Which solution did you opt for in the finish? How is the project progressing?

Bill Graham
Industrial Thinking Ltd

 

you still interesting in having information about Infusion; or i guess that Invensys had finish here Job and all had been upgraded Now ......?!

best Regards