xMII vs. OSIsoft Pi

[Former Member]

Hello experts,

I am very new to this area so please bear with me. My company is currently evaluating historian products to store their real time data from SCADA. One of these products is OSIsoft Pi. When I read their feature sheet, I see some similarities with what xMII does, except xMII does not appear to provide a historian data storage. Is this true? Can you tell me why one would use xMII in conjunction or instead of something like Pi?

Thanks,

[Former Member]

Cheuk,

As a PI Integrator primarily and having recently begun xMII installations i would agree with alot of what ryan has said but not all. If the Install you are going to be doing is primarily to access SCADA data, im presuming these SCADA systems have minature historians of there own which allow some data to be stored although this will have time constraints as to how long it can be stored locally.

This is where OSI PI comes in

1) There are no time constraints on how long you wish to store data, this is usually defined by the regulations you have to meet depending on your industry.

2) OSI PI has hundreds of interfaces to various systems, so should in the future wish to add different to systems to your data historian this is easily possible, PLC's, SQL, IT data etc. etc. SAP data is also possible with PI - using RLINK, though it would be on a system basis as to exactly which data is accessible and how easily.

3) PI has multiple reporting formats, from custom excel reports to trending applications and web based apps combining all forms and data sources. Your only limitation on reporting is essentially the data sources you have configured and your programmers ability, as to be fair is the case with xMII.

xMII is not intended to be a data historian and there for would only provide you with data dependant on the time constraints of the local SCADA historians. PI will store your data for as long as you wish.

xMII is a web based reporting tool, from which multiple data historians data can be accessed and displayed but not stored. PI will store your data and provide you with the ability to also display your data in multiple forms dependant on your licencing agreements.

Regards,

Emmett

[Former Member]

Good question. There is some overlap between the OSI suite of products and xMII. And, you are correct that xMII does not provide historian data storage. Some customers use xMII to collect data in a historian fashion, although it really isn't best.

Historians typically have fast and efficient ways of not just collecting, but reporting historical data. Also, historians have built in functions and algorithms to do quick and fast trending of data. The historians that I have worked with don't actually store data to a database table, but use files instead as databases don't provide the speed. Using xMII as a "historian" does not give you the advanced features of a historian.

If budgets allow, I would recommend using BOTH xMII and OSI PI. PI is one of the best historians that I have worked with. But, PI alone, does not have integration into ERP or other data sources. So, for instance, let's say you wanted to combine data from PI and Order data from ERP or a separate database, you'll need both products.