Sample Types

To achieve maximum flexibility with regard to future extensions and/or changes in the MTConnect Standard, the server allows to configure all sample item types specified in the MTConnect Standard. The predefined sample item type set which comes with the MTConnect server installation includes all sample item types defined in MTConnect Standard version 1.4. The complete list of the predefined sample item types you can find in topic Supported MTConnect Standard.

The sample types are subdivided into four groups, depending on the data type of the sample's value.

  • Numeric sample types

    Most of the MTConnect sample types expose a numeric value. This value either is a floating point value (of data type Float or Double) or an integer value (data type Int32 or UInt32).

  • Numeric 3D sample types

    The MTConnect sample data item PATH_POSITION represents a X/Y/Z coordinate, means this data item exposes three position values of type Double.

  • String sample types

    If a sample data item exposes a value which can't be coded as numeric value the String sample type can be used. Even though the current MTConnect Standard 1.4.0 doesn't specify any string sample types, the MTConnect server is already prepared to support this sample data type

  • DateTime sample types

    A few sample data items expose date, time, date and time or even time span values.

You can extend the predefined sample type set by additional types as required but we strongly recommend to not change the predefined types! If you need to extend the sample type set by a agent specific sample type we strongly recommend to add such an agent specific type to the agent's sample type set. The global sample type set should only contain sample types which specified in the MTConnect Standard.