Learn about PI BaGen and PI EFGen feature comparison

Where are the events stored?

PI Batch Database

PI AF Event Frames Database (SQL Server)

Event Database scalability

Thousands of events

Millions of events

Event Trigger method

PI tags

PI tags

Supports sub-second time stamps on active point tags

Yes

Yes

Supports overlapping events on same asset?

No. Follows ISA S88 limitations of only 1 ‘batch’ in a unit at a time

Yes. Multiple overlapping events can be written to the same equipment.

Generates complex hierarchical events (such as Batch)

Yes

Yes

Automatically populates event attributes?

Very limited. Limited to the fixed fields available in PI Batch Database (BatchID, Product, Recipe, Procedure, etc.).

Yes. Very flexible. You can define Event Frame templates to customize different attributes for different types of events.

Supports evaluation delay on event attribute population?

Yes

Yes

Consecutive event / batch merging

Yes

Yes

Interface deployment options

PI Server only

Anywhere (recommend PI AF Server or interface node)

Multiple interface instances on same server

No

Yes. Multiple interface instances can be configured on the same server.

Interface-level failover

No

Yes. Multiple interfaces can be configured as failover pairs.

Server-level failover

No

Yes. You can generate event frames through a failover server. Batch data collection stops.

History recovery

Yes, automatic

Yes, automatic

Event backfilling

Yes, but limited. Only since the time the last batch was written. You are required to manually delete batch records in some recovery scenarios before backfilling data.

Yes, but limited. Spot recovery can be done, but only since the time the last batch was written. You are required to manually delete batch records in some recovery scenarios before backfilling data.

HA reads: Supports HA PI Server reads for trigger tags

No

Yes. PI EFGen automatically retrieves trigger tag data from a secondary PI Server in an HA PI Server Collective.

HA writes: Supports HA writes to database

No. Data written to local PI Server only (typically primary PI Server)

Yes. Supports a HA event frames database if PI AF is configured for HA writes.