Issues with SAP PCo 15.1

[former_member1231563]

Hello Experts, i had recently installed SAP PCo 15.1 SP02 to establish an OLEDB connection with PI AF

What i observed is that the Agent gets into error in ever 2-3 days with a "!" type sign on the Agent status

I searched through the logs and found out that some issue with the process PcoSvcHost, below are the logs

Could anyone help me resolve this issue?

Also, are there any specific permission's for the user's that run the different services related to the Plant connectivity??

Thanks!

Best Regards

Praveen

[former_member1231563 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Everyone for the suggestions!!

I was able to resolve the issue, in the Agent configuration i had checked the "Run as an executable Checkbox" due to which the Agent was running as a normal window process instead of service, Even after unchecking it, i was facing issues as by default, it takes the local system user credentials to run the service.

On providing the credentials of the logged in user that has access to PI, for running the service, its working fine and giving proper values

Not sure whether this is required when we already specify the authentication credentials while configuring the Source System but this solves my purpose for now!

[salvatore_castro]

It's possible that you're just hitting a "timeout" in the OLEDB connection to the PI database.  This would close the connection without telling the OLEDB interface and could also cause the same symptoms.

Sam

[former_member1231563]

Hello Salvatore,

The query output is instantaneous within few seconds giving me all the rows of data as expected, so just to elloborate, i am consuming events generated by PI AF in a template that are getting triggered based on some set conditions

The template gives start date time, end datetime, tag name, tag value & UoM

Now for all the closed events i am getting all the values, but for the open events that are still active (i.e. trigger condition is still above the threshold) and have no end datetime, i am getting tag value as "NA"

Now if i start the agent manually in PCo console and don't log off the server, i am able to see the values for all, as shown below

Once i want to log off the server and make the Agent service start automatically in the agent service properties, again the values for open events return back to NA

I am not sure why this is happening as the template query is giving results in the PI Query explorer also and i can't keep the server open all the time with agent started manually

Could you provide any pointers on this, have also raised a ticket to MFG-PCO on this

Thanks

Praveen

[Former Member]

Hi Praveen ,

Could you please check on the date format .

Is the data corrupted ?

As I see the screen shot ,its clear that current values are displayed after you restart PCo Manually  but time field is Time Unavailable .

Thanks,

Neha Kshirsagar

[former_member1231563]

Hello Neha,

Thanks for the reply!!

As i had mentioned , its an open event, which is still active and that's why there is no end date attached to it, till the time the tag value is above a defined threshold, it will not get closed but yeah it will have a value at that instant

Best Rgrds,

Praveen

[former_member196557]

Hi Praveen,

The error code 0x80004005 is indication that the connection request to the OLEDB source was refused with access denied. Since this is an OLEDB connection I would also check the security logs on the PI AF source to see if there are any corresponding entries.  You can also look in the Windows Event Log for the Agent Instance (the event log name is identified on the Agent Instance Logs tab at the bottom) to see the corresponding entry.  I would also look in Windows event Log System and Application logs to see if there are any errors or warnings with similar datetime event times.

the OLEDB Source Agent authenticates with the OLEDB connection using the credentials supplied when configuring the connection, not with the credentials of the Agent Instance Service.  The default user for Agent Instance services is LocalSystem which has permissions for almost everything in Windows.

If you think that this issue is not caused by the PI AF OLEDB connection, please log a ticket against MFG-PCO so that Support can investigate. Please provide complete details of the error, and include an export of the PCo Configuration if possible.

Regards, Steve

[former_member1231563]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for the reply!!!

Where ever i checked the logs i saw the same error code and message as "connection refused", though i still need to check this on the OSI PI end as its under a different team

I was going through your ppt. on SAP PCo, where you have mentioned how web services can be used to carry out different operations on the Agent

I developed a MII transaction on those lines to restart the Agent whenever its in faulty or stopped state to serve my purpose but i am again facing a very strange kind of an issue,to eloborate,

We are retrieving event frames from PI-AF through an OLEDB connection in PCo for conditional plant maintenance at SAP, in each event frame we have the event date time stamps, tag name, tag value and tag UoM

Now if i stop the agent and use web services to restart it, it does restart the agent but when i query PI AF again, all the "tag value" fields in the event frame which is number field shows value as "NA", strangely all other fields are coming correctly

When i manually start the agent from the PCo console, i am able to see all the tag values again in the OLEDB PCo Query at MII end

Could you help me solve this or provide any provide pointers on it???

Thanks

Praveen

[former_member196557]

Hi Praveen,

I recommend that you log a ticket on the issue with restarting the OLEDB agent instance as I have not seen this before and cannot troubleshoot it.

Can you try using the PCo 15.1 Asset Framework Source Agent for the connection to PI AF? This is a native connector for PCo and does not rely on OLEDB; you will only need to deploy the PI AF SDK to the PCo server prior to creating the Source Agent. You can get the SDK from the PI team.

Regards, Steve

[former_member1231563]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for your suggestions!!

My problem seem to have been resolved to a great extent by installing the latest versions of PI SDK's and PI OLEDB, guess the older versions were creating problem in connection & absurd values sometimes

As you have mentioned about PI AF source system agent, would just like to know, does it have any marked advantages or additional querying options over the PI AF OLEDB connection that you are aware of???

It could be beneficial in our case if it has, kindly do let me know

Best Regards

Praveen

[former_member196557]

Hi Praveen,

What are you querying from PI AF via OLEDB: Point values, AF Asset data, or both?

PI AF Source Agent can be configured as a PI Point interface. then the PI AF Point Agent Instance can be used with MII 's PCoQuery template/action to  configure current value and/or aggregate queries from PI without having to construct SQL Queries.  Similar capability exists for PI AF Assets source agent. Why not just deploy the Agents, configure the Agent Instances, connect them to MII Data Servers, and test them?

Regards, Steve

[former_member1231563]

Hello Steve,

We are querying the data of an Event frame template in PI AF, which produces events whenever a tag or combination of tags crosses a threshold or fulfills a trigger criteria as configured

The Client is willing to configure trigger conditions in PI AF as its easily extensible across assets through AF rather than doing it in MII

MII would just fetch the events from AF which would have some data fields that needs to be sent to SAP

Thanks

Praveen

[former_member1231563]

Hello Steve,

Also, i still see that issue persisting where restarting the agent through services/webservices, i am getting some or the value as "NA"

The values only come back to normal once i restart manually through PCo Management console

I better raise a ticket against MFG-PCO

Thanks

Praveen

[Former Member]

Hi Praveen ,

How many connections are presently made to this PCo System.

Just to help you investigate more could you design a transaction and schedule it to run to monitor you PCo Connections .

In MII how many connections are been made to this PCo Instance.Are there continuous querying to data ?

Thanks,

Neha

.

[former_member1231563]

Hello Neha,

I only have a single agent created as of now for connecting to PI AF which is used only in the Development environment currently

I don't suspect number of connections is an issue as i am able to retrieve the data for all the events from PI AF that are closed, only the events that are open i.e. which have no end time are showing value as NA

Strange thing is that when i restart the agent in PCo console manually i am able to see the values correctly, but if i keep the agent started automatically through services again NA appears for the open event values

Thanks

Praveen