Historian Release Notes

Table 1. What's New in Historian

The following enhancements and new features have been added.
Description Tracking ID
You can now access the help content at https://www.ge.com/digital/documentation/historian/version81/index.html instead of https://apps-docs.predix.io/en-US/content/hmi_scada/historian. The new portal offers:
  • A single point of access for documentation related to all GE Digital products through https://www.ge.com/digital/product-documentation.
  • Access to multiple versions of documentation:
    • 8.1
    • 8.0
    • 7.2
    • 7.1
  • A comprehensive list of documentation for various products, categorized in three sections:
    • Predix Platform
    • APM and OPM
    • Manufacturing and Digital Plant
 F49479

Historian Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tools

Historian ETL tools have been introduced in this release. They provide a periodic file-oriented data transfer from an onsite Proficy Historian or PI Server machine to a destination Proficy Historian server when a consistent connection is not possible or not cost-effective.

 F36011

Remote Collector Management

You can now manage a collector remotely, which helps you overcome the challenges and costs involved in accessing the collector physically. To facilitate this enhancement, the Remote Collector Management agent has been introduced. Using this agent, you can send commands to a collector using REST APIs.

 F49480

Support for Azure IoT Distributor

In addition to storing data on Predix Time Series Cloud, you can now store data from the Historian server on Azure IoT Hub. This will allow you to run analyse the data using the Azure analytics tools. To facilitate this enhancement, anew instance of the Server-to-Server collector is used (with the destination set to Azure IoT Hub).

 F49485

Dynamic Configuration Changes for Bimodal Collectors

Previously, if you added or deleted tags of a bimodal collector, or modified the properties of the tags or the collector using the offline configuration file, the changes were reflected only after you restarted the collector. Now, the changes are reflected dynamically, without the need to restart the collector.

 F49484

Performance Improvements of the Alarms and Events Collector

The performance of the Alarms and Events collector has been improved by implementing the following changes:
  • Reducing the batch size to 10: In case of a failure, the Alarms and Events collector receives an acknowledgement after sending 10 messages, thus reducing the load on the server.
  • Automatically incrementing the waiting time: The waiting time for receiving an acknowledgement is automatically incremented after each failure per batch, starting from 90 seconds to 270 seconds. This gives more time for the server to respond.
    Note: After the acknowledgement is received, the batch size and the waiting time are reset for the subsequent batches.
  • Batch-wise purging: Purging is now performed in batches. Therefore, if the time taken to purge exceeds the timeout limit, instead of reverting the entire purging operation, only the current batch, which is still under processing, is purged.
In addition, purging the alarms and events data is now GUI-based with the following options:
  • Purge data within a time range.
  • Purge all data except for the data received in a certain duration till now. For example, purge all alarms except for the ones received in the last 30 days.
  • View the number of records and the space consumed by the data.
F49844

Storage of Future Data

Previously, you could store only up to 1200 seconds of future data in Historian. Now, you can store unlimited future data (that is, up to 19 January, 2038) in Historian. This future data is the predicted data, which has a future timestamp. You can use this data to perform a predictive or forecast analysis (for example, using trend charts), and revise the forecasting algorithms as needed.

F49483

Multiple-Level Topic Subscription for an MQTT Collector

Using an MQTT collector, you can now subscribe to multiple-level topics using a wildcard.

 US412688
Table 2. Obsolete Features

The following features are no longer supported.
Description Tracking ID
Historian is no longer supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8. N/A
Table 3. Resolved Issues

The following issues have been resolved.
Description Tracking ID
Previously, in the trend client, when you accessed the information of a tag for the second or third time, the information was not displayed properly until you refreshed the page. This issue has been resolved. DE128878
Previously, in the trend client, if you created a favourite view in a normal view, and then tried to access it in a stacked view, all the buttons were disabled. This issue has been resolved. DE111793
Previously, when you attempted to add tags to a collector using Historian Administrator, the application took a long time to respond. This issue has been resolved. DE126680
Previously, the last-modified value displayed for a tag was incorrect. This issue has been resolved. DE121624
Previously, the data collected by the OPC collector contained incorrect values periodically. This issue has been resolved. DE124993
Previously, the performance of the HDANSrv.Net4.exe application was poor. This issue has been resolved. DE116401
Previously, if the time zone of a data source was set to UTC, Historian rendered data in UTC instead of using the local time zone. This issue has been resolved. DE123152
Previously, iHSDK.dll returned incorrect GUID. This issue has been resolved. DE131925
Previously, the .shw file of the ODBC collector contained login credentials. This issue has been resolved. DE132324
Previously, the documentation did not contain information on whether each collector was toolkit-based and whether it used a CAL. This issue has been resolved. The information is now included in the Data Collectors - General section of the documentation. DE126396
Previously, there was loss of data in the server-to-cloud collector backfill. This issue has been resolved. DE115651
Table 4. Known Issues

The following issues are unresolved in this release.
Description Tracking ID
While performing a multi-tag calculated data query using the Excel Add-in for Historian, an error occurs if you edit the query. DE184301
You cannot browse for tags in the server-to-server and server-to-collector collectors if Windows security is enabled. DE135459
The OPCUA DA collector stops working for unsolicited tags after you disconnect and reconnect to the source. DE135433
In Trend Client, if you have used a calculated data query, and have provided an interval for the data, the query results appear only for half of the interval that you have selected. DE134193
If you attempt to log in to the web admin console as user belonging to the ihsecurity group, and if you use LDAP, an error occurs. DE134898
The ODBC collector does not start automatically after you upgrade to the latest version. DE135397
Archive backup is not functional in the web admin.

Workaround: Perform archive backup using the ihArchiverBackup tool or Think client.

 DE124038
File, Calculation, and Simulator collector services are removed after installing the Client tools.

Workaround: Reinstall the collectors after installing the Client tools.

 DE123472
When you use Excel Add-in Client tools for Mirror Node the Data Archiver Services are not appearing in services. DE123374
Collectors services are deleted after server is uninstalled.

Workaround: Reinstall the collectors after installing the Client tools.

 DE123370
When you install Alarms & Events, Excel is uninstalled.

Workaround: Reinstall the Excel add-in after installing Alarms & Events.

 DE123292
You cannot export only one tag using the Excel add-in.

Workaround: Enter ? after the tag name that you want to export.

 DE123255
When Collector Compression is Enabled and set to Absolute, the Compression Timeout Value is not retained. DE123116
When compression in turned on with compression timeout, invalid data points are logged . DE123049
The Max. Recovery Time property cannot be for S2D. DE122998
The Tags to Recalculate section is disabled in the Recalculate window of the S2D Collector. DE122986
When you uninstall the collector, the OPC Collector Shortcut is not removed. DE122882
The Second data point is not available after Data Collection is disabled and enabled at Source in the S2S Collector. DE122660
AdoptOpenJDK is installed in only C-Drive, when you choose to install Historian in the any other drive. DE112542
Historian 7.1 Sim1 uninstallation fails on some of the machines.

Workaround: Stop all Historian Server services and then uninstall Historian Sim1.

 DE114135
Tags which are associated with ENUM are not correctly displayed in the destination machine when connected using OPC HDA Collector. DE113677
Compression is not applied for OPCHDA Cloud collector. DE114500
When you update the archive duration from 1 Day to 1 Hour using Historian Administrator, Day based archives are created instead of Hour based archives in Mirroring system. DE114615
When you upgrade a Collector to the latest version the settings are not updated. DE115227
When compression is enabled for Cloud Collector tag, an extra value is stored before the compression timeout. DE115323
User is not able to log in to Plant Applications, if Historian is installed after installing Plant Applications. DE115530
Wonderware Collector is crashing when you select and delete all the source tags at once. DE115868
Prefix is not getting added to the messages when message prefix is enabled in Server to Server Collector configurations. DE113857
Compression is not working in OPC HDA Collector. DE114864
Readattime option is not working while querying the data from OPC HDA Server using Matrikon Client DE115033
Tag level Security - Administrator group user cannot browse and edit the tag if Read or Write group is already configured. DE115633

ReadRaw query fails while installing OPC HDA Server.

DE107325
In case, the user is planning to install products like Cimplicity or iFIX, Historian must be installed last. DE92870

Alarm Archiver is not uninstalling completely.

Workaround: Uninstalling Historian Alarms and Events alone will not clear all binaries and services. To uninstall completely, Historian server needs to be uninstalled first, this in turn will uninstall Historian Alarms and Events as well.

DE93236

Following are the issues that are consolidated as known issues with Installers of various Historian components:

DE91421 : WPC Collector .exe is not upgraded in the windows service after upgrade from 7.0 SP5 to 7.1.

DE91413 : Excel Add-In not retaining default server setting on upgrade

DE91424 : On upgrading Collectors it does not retain Historian server name

DE92530 : Upgrade of Alarm Archiver from 5.5 to 7.1 is uninstalling previously installed excel add-in

DE93236 : Alarm Archiver is not uninstalling properly

DE93253 : Start collector shortcut is not removed from Start / Program Menu after uninstalling OPC DA and OPC collector

DE91414 : Client tools installation asking for OPC prog ids

DE91419 : Collectors getting installed when only client tools are installed

DE91461 : 7.1 excel addin doesn't ask for historian server name while installing, 5.5 excel addin asks

DE91503 : Upgrade dialog box is displayed while performing uninstallation of Client Tools (Proficy historian)

DE92870 : Historian install fails if its installed before CIMPLICITY or iFIX

DE92912 : Alarm and Event service is removed from system after upgrading from SP6 to 7.1

Workaround for the above issue is: Uninstall the component that has the issue from the above list and then install the respective Historian 7.1 component afresh. Make sure appropriate backups (Such as : registry, data files, credentials, custom settings etc.) are taken before uninstalling the component.

 DE94396
If the tag is renamed (not permanent rename - Aliasing) the tag name is available for selection in the browse tag list(shown in blue color). If the user tries to select and add the tag, an error message is throwing denoting "Error Adding Tags". DE91020

In a domain environment, collectors which are running under local system account are not connected to Historian Enterprise OR PH5.5.

User need to run the collector as Specific user account and then start the collector service to connect to Historian Server.

 DE93416
In the Excel Add-In, the search message functionality is not returning expected output when start/end time format is mm/dd/yyyyy HH:mm:ss. DE93928
Using Historian Microsoft Excel Add-in plugin, querying for Historian tags data would work consistently across multiple versions of Microsoft Excel only when the with length of the tag is less than or equal to 180 characters. It is possible that with the latest versions of Microsoft Excel (2016) length could be more. DE93442
In Trend Client, due to long length (around 256 characters), the display of all tags is not properly aligned. You may see the same issue in Current value charts. DE94749

Historian SDK sample (VB) is shipped with Historian Server Install only and not with the Client Tools Install.

Work around: Use the Historian SDK samples (VB) from Samples\SDK folder.

 DE95660