What's New in PI AF 2010 R3

The property PISystemServerTime has been added. It returns the current time of the connected PI AF Server. The property PISystemServerTimeZone returns the time zone of the connected PI AF Server.

Path processing has been extended to support richer XPath syntax for defining references to objects. Characteristics of the object, including template, categories, description, reference type, wild-card name syntax can be used to identify objects within the path. The method AFObjectFindObject documents the full AF Path syntax. This syntax can be used in many other path processing methods and features of AF, including AFAttributeFindAttributesByPath, AFElementFindElementsByPath and AFEventFrameFindEventFramesByPath. Most Data References will also allow use of the richer path syntax as well.

AF now has the ability to load different versions of plugins based on their type. AF will automatically recognize assemblies based on whether they are 32 or 64 bit, and whether they are build with .NET 3.5 or .NET 4.0. The property AFPlugInAssemblyLoadProperties can be used with the AF SDK to return the OSIsoft.AFAFPlugInLoadPropertiesAttribute enumeration which indicates which versions are provided in the plug-in.

All AF Collections now support as AsReadOnly property to return a generic read-only list to the caller. These list can perform faster than using the original list.

The constructor AFAttributeAFAttribute(String) is added which provides dynamic creation of an attribute. It is typically used to directly associate a PI Point with an attribute.

The property AFAttributeServerTime returns the current time of the server which is the data source of the attribute. The property AFAttributeServerTimeZone returns the time zone of the server which is the data source of the attribute. The property AFAttributeStep indicates how the attribute interpolates values.

The property AFValueAttribute indicates the source attribute from which a value was obtained. The property AFValuesAttribute indicates the source attribute from which a list of values was obtained, if determinable.

The constructor AFEnumerationValueAFEnumerationValue(String, Int32) provides dynamic creation of an enumeration value, typically used to represent a pi digital state. The property AFEnumerationSetSystemStateSet provides access to the universally defined system state set. The .NET enum, AFSystemStateCode, provides programmatic access to the standard system state sets. The method AFValueCreateSystemStateValue provides a mechanism for creating system digital state values for bad values.

The Event Frame namespace is now officially released and supported in this version of AF. Both client and server versions must be at the minimum of AF 2.4 to use Event Frames.

All Event Frame-based searches, including AFEventFrameFindEventFrames, AFTransferFindTransfers and AFCaseFindCases, have a new overload which accepts an enumeration of type AFEventFrameSearchMode. The enumeration allows for searches forward and backward in time based off either the start or end time of the event frame. Note that in this release, obsoleted FindEventFrames methods were removed. Applications compiled against earlier versions of the AF SDK that utilized these event frame methods will need to be recompiled.

A new class, AFTimeSpan, is added to represent and operate on time intervals. A time span can be divided into a number of AFTimeIntervalDefinition structures.

Several new methods for parsing time, AFTimeParse and AFTimeTryParse, which include optional reference time (dynamic time) and an optional format provider.

Additional overloads for AFTimeToString and AFTimeRangeToString are provided which accept a format provider.