PCo 2.3 & MII 14.02 -- PCO Query unable to mask tags

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We have an MII 14.0.2 environment with PCo 2.3 connecting to a FactoryTalk Historian (OSI-Pi Engine c/w PI SDK 1.4).

I am looking to query the historian via a PCo query for all tags ending with "Code", i.e. TAG003.Launch_Code. The PCo query template retrieves the tag list but only when I don't use masking. In fact the masking is grayed out, the default selection being "native mask".

When I try the native FT wildcards, namely "*" for a series of characters and "?" for a single character, the tags list empties - i.e. Mask: "*Code" or "TAG???.Launch_Code".

I also tried the same pointing it to the PCo Simulator, instead of the FT Historian. Same result. If any mask is entered there, the tag list empties (i.e does not filter, properly, removing everything). Does/is someone else encountering the same issue?

Many thanks,

Paul.

[former_member211944 · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul,

There are two types of filtering in PCo Query:

1. Native: this masking is used when the Cache Mode of the PCo Agent is 'Demand' or 'None'.

     This filtering depends on the data source of the PCo agent. In this case PCo routes the filter to      the data source and then it is taken care by the data source.

     So you need to check the data source for the filtering wildcards i.e. what kind of wildcards this      data source supports.

2. RegEx or Regular Expressions: this masking is done in PCo. So it is same for all the agents.

     This filtering is used when the Cache mode of the PCo Agent is 'Cache' or 'Alias'.

     This filtering follows the definition of regular expressions.

     So 'Code' as mask would work for you as you want tags ending with 'Code'

So you can choose the filtering type based on the cache mode of the PCo agent.

Also PCoSimulator does not supports Masking.

Regards,

Rohit Negi.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Rohit,

Will check the PCo Cache Mode .. it should be set to DEMAND since all the tags should be queried only when needed, according to the composite application architecture and the quantity of tags in the historian (more than 15k)

Is there any case when the cache mode selection disables masking altogether (i.e. one cannot do any masking) ?

Paul

[former_member211944 · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul,

Should not be the case.

In DEMAND mode the Native masking should work. But in this case again the datasource should support that.

Regards,

Rohit Negi.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

As I suspected, the PCo Agent was configured already in DEMAND cache mode. However one thing changed between the PCo versions.

While using PCo 2.1 & 2.2 you had to type there the mask as you want the tags filtered (i.e. "*Code" for filtering out all tags not ending in Code) the present approach is to type the whole mask request (i,e, tag='*Code' for the same result).

Anyway, now it's working and everyone's happy!

Many thanks,

Paul