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AF SDK Reference

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What's New in PI AF 2016

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  • Last UpdatedNov 18, 2025
  • 6 minute read
What's New in PI AF 2016

The PI AF 2016 (2.8.0.7444, 2.8.1.7549, 2.8.2.7626) release is a major release that implements a preview of a new, more scalable notification infrastructure. This also expands the functionality of event frames to include annotations, acknowledgments and severity. Annotations are provided for elements, transfers and cases as well.

The ability to define attributes with specific characteristics and behaviors, such as limits and predictions, and associate those with other attributes has been added.

New data access calls are available, including async versions of most data calls. New methods of RecordedValuesAtTimes and ReplaceValues allow more efficient data access with the PI Data Archive 2016.

This release also delivers improved scalability and performance overall, with major improvements focused on event frame searching. The AF SDK provides a new, simpler, text-based query mechanisms for finding Elements and Event Frames.

This topic contains the following sections:

OSIsoft.AF Namespace

The AFSecurityRightsAnnotate security permission was added to control the ability to annotate an AFBaseElement and acknowledge an AFEventFrame. The AFObjectGenerateUniqueName(String, IAFList) helper method was added to allow the generation of unique names based upon the items in the supplied list. The following new properties return the configured restrictions for an AFFile which are set using the AFDiag utility: PISystemFileAllowedExtensions and PISystemFileMaxLength.

To support exporting in different time formats when exporting in CSV format, the PIExportModeUseServerTimeZone and PIExportModeUseUtcTime properties have been added. To support searching for an attribute by trait, the new path filter AFPathFilterTypeTrait has been added.

To support a new, more scalable notification infrastructure, the following collections have been added in preview for this release:

OSIsoft.AF.Analysis Namespace

The AFAnalysisTemplateCreateEnabled was added to control the initial status of auto-generated analyses.

OSIsoft.AF.Asset Namespace

An attribute can be designated for manual data entry with the new AFAttributeTemplateIsManualDataEntry and AFAttributeIsManualDataEntry properties. Client applications can utilize this flag to determine whether to provide users with data entry. The new method AFAttributeIsSupportedDataMethod(AFDataMethods) was added to test if an attribute supports a data method.

The new class AFAttributeTrait has been added to allow attributes with well-known behaviors and relationships to be defined. The trait can be used when referencing or finding the attribute instead of needing to know the actual name of the attribute. The following properties and methods have been added to be used with attribute traits:

To support annotations on an AFBaseElement, the AFBaseElementIsAnnotated property and AFBaseElementGetAnnotations method have been added. A new copy constructor AFFileAFFile(AFFile) was added to make it easier to copy file values. To support acknowledging an event frame, the AFElementTemplateCanBeAcknowledged property was added. The AFElementTemplateSeverity property was added to set the default severity for a new event frame.

The AFValueCreate methods have been added to allow the creation of an AFValue without the overhead of boxing/unboxing.

To support new methods in AFData class, the following new methods have been added to a data reference:

The following new properties and methods have been added in preparation for new, more scalable notification infrastructure. Even though these objects are exposed in the SDK, they are still under development and subject to change.

OSIsoft.AF.Data Namespace

The new method AFDataReplaceValues has been added to replace values within a time range. PI Data Archive 2016 or later is required. To get values as specific times, the AFDataRecordedValuesAtTimes and AFListDataRecordedValuesAtTimes methods have been added. These methods require the PI Data Archive 2016 or later to take full advantage of the performance gains.

Support for asynchronous method calls has been added with the addition of the following methods (corresponding methods were also added to the AFDataReference class):

To support annotations on an AFBaseElement, the following properties and methods have been added to the AFAnnotation class:

OSIsoft.AF.EventFrame Namespace

OSIsoft.AF.Notification Namespace

OSIsoft.AF.PI Namespace

The new method PIServerSupports and new enumeration PIServerFeature have been added to allow checking if a feature is supported on the PI Data Archive. The PIPointQueryParseQuery method has been added to parse queries into tokens for searching.

The new method PIPointReplaceValues has been added to replace values within a time range. PI Data Archive 2016 or later is required. To get values as specific times, the PIPointRecordedValuesAtTimes and PIPointListRecordedValuesAtTimes methods have been added. These methods require the PI Data Archive 2016 or later to take full advantage of the performance gains.

Support for asynchronous method calls has been added with the addition of the following methods:

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