Dream Report for HMI Panels - Automated Data Collection and Processing

Dream Report Automated Data Collection and Processing from HMI Panels

HMI Panels are pervasive throughout the automation industry, in every vertical market. These powerful interfaces offer the ability to interact with your control systems, starting and stopping processes, setting recipes, processing alarms and logging data. Many applications would benefit greatly from a solution that would automatically aggregate data from these islands of automation and deliver actionable information in the form of reports and dashboards. This is where Dream Report comes in.

Today’s HMI Panel Products generally offer the following features:

Ability to Log Alarm Data to CSV or other files
Ability to Log Process Data to CSV or other files
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Support
OPC UA Server and other Protocol Support
Ability to host external URL content (Web Frames)

Dream Report offers complementary features for HMI Panel Products:

Automated File Collection via FTP
CSV File Processing and Data Logging to a Relational Database of your choice
Automated History Database Import (for proprietary data stores)
Real-time Polling of data (OPC UA or other Protocols)
Writing of Data (OPC UA or other Protocols)
Delivering Results through URL Queries (Reports and Dashboards)
Interactions and Data Entry through Web Forms (Hosted in a Panel Display)

Dream Report Automated FTP File Collection

Dream Report delivers standard tool called the FTP Transfer Engine. This utility lets the user set up any number of scheduled file transfers from remote FTP locations to a local Windows Directory that Dream Report will subsequently access for file processing. Users give each transfer definition a Name, From and To specifications, FTP Credentials and a Checkup Rate (frequency to look for new or updated files).

CSV File Processing and Data Logging to a Relational Database of your choice

Once CSV Files are delivered to a directory, Dream Report offers a Driver that will automatically check for new or updated files, read those files, importing the selected data and store that data to a relational database of your choice. The only database requirements are that it be ODBC compliant. Dream Report supports several CSV file formats and can adapt to a wide variety of date and time formats, including milliseconds.

Automated History Database Import (for proprietary data stores)

In cases where data is stored in external databases, there are times that users would want that data backed up to a Relational Database. This is NOT a requirement for Dream Report. Dream Report will report directly from third party databases, and does not require data to be transferred for processing as many other reporting and dashboard solutions do. However, if replication is a user requirement, then another Tool called the Custom Archive Import performs that task. Users may specify a set of tags to be monitored from a remote repository, and can specify periods or a schedule for import.

Real-time Polling of data (OPC UA or other Protocols)

Dream Report supports real-time data access from remote devices using proprietary protocols and industry standards such as OPC UA. Real-time data can be used in snapshot reports, real-time dashboards and can be logged for historic analysis in reports and dashboards.

Writing of Data (OPC UA or other Protocols)

Real-time drivers also offer the ability for Dream Report to Write back to process variables. This is often useful for adaptive alarm scenarios, where alarm levels should be set based on calculations on history data. Writing back to process variables is also required for recipe loading. Dream Report has the ability to read recipes out of a SQL Database for example, present it to an operator for approval or modification, and then both report on the recipe and download parameters to a device.

Delivering Results through URL Queries (Reports and Dashboards)

The Dream Report browser based portal is used to host all Dream Report documents for user access. Document formats include PDF files, Excel and HTML5 interactive web pages. The web service that supports the Dream Report portal also supports URL based calls to trigger Dream Report actions. This Webservice can generate reports, open reports, and open web forms for data entry or real time dashboards. These URL based commands would typically be action items behind panel HMI objects or buttons.

Interactions and Data Entry through Web Forms (Hosted in a Panel Display)

Hosting of resulting browser based content is usually done through the use of a Web Frame (iFrame) or other panel specific function. Hosting can support the entire Dream Report HTML5 based framework, or individual reports and dashboards as specified by the URL.