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pipoint contains tag configuration tables (one per point class)
pisystem contains product version information
piuser contains user database tables
The user can also create new tables in the pipoint and pids catalog. This is equivalent to
creating new point classes and new digital state sets, respectively.
Another function is to create Views. Large tables like the picomp table which represents all
events in the PI archive may be unwieldy for end users. Also, it might be more convenient to
virtually merge tables to a new table. This can be done with Views. A newly created View
will be available to other users too.
This product is licensed with the PI Data Access (DA) server module and needs to be
installed on the various computers from which one needs to access PI via OLEDB.
When installed on a user PC it may update the Microsoft MDAC components and will install
or update the PI SDK. PI OLEDB is mainly a DLL, comparable to a printer driver or ODBC
driver. It requires an application (in OLE DB terms called a consumer) to make use of it. One
application that supports standard OLE DB providers by default is MS Excel (XP or higher).
Also there are ActiveX controls that connect to OLE DB providers that can for example be
inserted into ProcessBook displays. Finally PI OLEDB comes with a number of example
applications that show how to develop your own OLE DB applications.
1.1.4 Suggested Approach
PartA
Use the PI OLEDB snap-in for MMC to explore the table structure.
• Starting from the example query of the piarchive..piinterp table, extract the values of
the last day – with their timestamp – for the tag ba:level.1 (only the time and value
columns should be displayed)
• Create a new laboratory PI point in the pipoint..classic table, whose name is
"LabTag1" and type is "Int32"
• Send two laboratory measurement values in the LabTag1 point, using the
piarchive..picomp2 table, then make sure these values appear in the pimin and pimax
tables:
• Value of -111, at the current time minus a few seconds
• Value of 222, at the current time
• Create a new digital state set (in the pids catalog) named "AlertStates", that contains
3 states: "Information", "Warning" and "Danger"
• Delete the point and the digital state set you just created