PI SDK

The PI Software Development Kit (PI SDK) is an ActiveX in-process server that provides COM access to OSIsoft historians. The product provides an object-oriented approach to interacting with PI Systems in contrast to the procedural methods used in the PI API.

The PI SDK can be installed only on Windows. Only interfaces that run on Windows can take advantage of the functionality provided by the PI SDK. All interfaces written for UNIX or VMS use the PI API exclusively for all communication with the Data Archive server.

Some interfaces use the PI SDK because certain functionality is not provided by the PI API. For example, the PI SDK enables interfaces to create points and digital state sets. Also, any interface that writes batch data to PI, such as PI Batch Generator Interface (PIBaGen), must use the PI SDK to write data.

Any data that is written to Data Archive by the PI SDK is not buffered by the PI Buffer Subsystem service. For this reason, all interfaces write time-series data to Data Archive using the PI API.

Interfaces that connect to Data Archive using both the PI SDK and the PI API maintain two separate connections to the Data Archive server.