Troubleshooting iFIX and Historian

Running iFIX as a Service with iFIX Workspace Listed in the SCU Task List

Prior to iFIX 5.1, if you have configured iFIX to run as a service, you should not have WORKSPACE.EXE listed as a configured task in the Task Configuration dialog box of the SCU. If WORKSPACE.EXE is listed as a configured task, it may lead to unpredictable results. For example, if you are also running Historian, no servers will appear in the Server Name field of the Configure the Historian Server dialog box and you will not be able to browse Historian tags in the iFIX Expression Editor.

To rectify this, remove WORKSPACE.EXE from the list of configured tasks in the SCU.

iFIX WorkSpace delay when remote session is lost

If the connection between iFIX and a remote Historian session is lost, you may experience a 90 second delay in the iFIX Workspace Configuration environment, chart, or Expression Builder when accessing a pen associated with that Historian session.

In the Run Time Environment, all pens in a chart disappear for 90 seconds when the session to a remote Historian session is lost, even if they are associated with a local Historian server.

Starting iFIX when a remote Historian session is unavailable

If you are using Historian with iFIX, the iFIX Workspace attempts to connect to the Historian Server when it starts up. If a remote Historian server is unavailable, it may take one minute or longer for iFIX Workspace to display for each unavailable server.

Accessing Mission Control when a remote Historian session is lost

If a remote Historian session is lost while you are accessing `the HTC tab of Mission Control in the iFIX Workspace, the H tab may blank out for a minute or longer.

Accessing tags in the iFIX chart after setting OPC "Collector to Made After Restart"

If you add tags in the Historian Administrator to a Server from an OPC Collector that has Configuration Changes set to Made After Collector Restart, you will be able to see those tags in the iFIX Expression Builder. You can add them to a chart, for example, but they have no collected data until you manually stop and restart the OPC Collector.

Collecting data in an iFIX chart with Time Assigned By Source

If you are retrieving data in an iFIX Chart from a Historian Server, have set the Time Assigned by field to Source, and have collectors running behind the Server time, the chart will display a flatline up to the current time of the local machine.

Note: You must set Time Assigned by field to Source if you have unsolicited tags getting data from an OPC Collector.

Synchronizing the time on iFIX SCADA Servers and View Clients

To ensure that acknowledgements are not lost or attributed to the wrong alarm, synchronize the clocks on SCADA servers and iFIX View Client machines. If the clocks are not synchronized, alarms generated on the SCADA nodes and acknowledged on the iFIX View Client nodes could have significantly different timestamps. You can synchronize the clocks using the NET TIME command. Refer to the Windows Help system for more information.

The Historian REST API Reference manual specifies port 8443 in examples and sample code. If you copy and paste the sample code from this Help manual, you must change this port number to your installed port.

If you have a previous install of Historian, and you have installed PHA/PKC 6.0/6.1, you will need to uninstall and then reinstall Historian.