SCADA Software – Automated Report Generation
SCADA Software making up SCADA Systems in all markets, make their data available to report generation software through industry standards or proprietary interfaces. The most common standards for SCADA Systems would include ODBC (a Database Standard) and OPC (an automation industry standard). SCADA Software may also support vendor specific proprietary interfaces.
Industrial Report Generation Software will support SCADA Software interfaces through ODBC, OPC or proprietary interfaces. These are typically referred to as Drivers. The purpose of the Driver is to provide easily configurable connectivity to the Real-time Data, History Data and Alarm/Event messages that the SCADA applications generate for Reporting Tools.
Drivers that Connect Dream Report to SCADA Systems
Standards such as OPC-DA and MODBUS, or proprietary interfaces offer access to SCADA System Real-time Data. Real-time Data is used to Trigger events in automated report generation or for use in snapshot reports (reports and dashboards of current conditions). Events fall into categories such as alarm triggers – generate a report based on an alarm, status triggers – generate a report when something is on or off, or above or below levels, and batch triggers – generate a report at the end of a batch. In all cases, triggers are configured in the Report Generator Software and operations thereafter are automatic.
History Data is logged by the SCADA System and accessed via proprietary interfaces or standards such as ODBC and OPC HDA. History Data will provide greater depths of data for time or batch-based analytics. Triggers for reports and dashboards will begin the process of querying data from the SCADA System, analyzing that data, formatting the results and generating the final output as either a report or a dashboard.
Alarm and Event Data is typically logged to a relational database or to a SCADA Alarm / Event Log file or files. Alarm and Event data is then accessed by the Reporting Tools /Reporting Software via standards such as OPC AE, ODBC or proprietary interfaces. Better report generators will then perform alarm and event analysis in addition to just reporting. Alarm and event analysis will include categorizing information by user, equipment or source and will organize results by priority or counts. Many industries have requirements for alarm reporting and the ANSI/ISA 18.2 Standard is a great example.
There are two schools of thoughts for automated report generation from SCADA Systems. The first leverages typical business intelligence (BI) software such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, or SAP Crystal Reports for industrial reports and dashboards. The drawback with this solution is that these reporting tools don’t understand industrial data as archived by SCADA Software, and don’t understand the analytics that need to be performed on industrial data. As a result, the user needs to perform a great deal more data manipulation, usually through programming and scripting, to generate a result. Also, these software tools generally do not offer the 24x7x365 automation of purpose-built solutions.
The second approach is to use Report Generation Software designed specifically for Industrial Report Generation and understanding Automation Data. Even here, there are two schools of thought. The first is to create extensions to augment BI tools such as Excel, improving its automation, better integrating it with industrial data sources, and improving its formatting ability to generate reports and dashboards. The second approach is to is to develop a solution, purpose built for Industrial Reports and Dashboards.
Dream Report – Award Wining for SCADA System Reports and Dashboards
Dream Report is the world’s leading solution for Industrial Reports and Dashboards. Recommended and Resold by more automation suppliers than any other solution, Dream Report has become the standard for all markets and all applications. This award-winning report generation software offers over 80 interfaces for Real-time, History and Alarm / Event data. Introduced in 2005, Dream Report has been through over 20 revisions and has been tailored for every market and virtually every application.
EPA Regulatory Reports are one of the critical applications performed with industrial data from your SCADA System. Dream Report has been enhanced over time to generate all the information required for Water and Waste Water EPA Compliance Reports.