Overview of how to use PI Integrator for Business Analytics

This outline describes how to use PI Integrator for Business Analytics to produce decision-ready data for your BI tool.

Tip: If you are using PI Integrator for Business Analytics for the first time, we recommend you start by exploring how to create an asset view and then move on to creating streaming or event views.

1. Select the PI System data to include in your analysis.

   Determine whether your analysis requires an asset view, event view, or streaming view. If you want to analyze your data broken down by assets, create an asset view. If you want to analyze your data by event frames, create an event view. If you want to analyze your data broken down by assets and you need values streamed for real-time analytics or some other analysis, create a streaming view.

   • Asset View – Start by creating a simple shape, for example, to find a single asset. The Matches pane is a preview of the elements that are found in the PI AF database that match your shape.

   • Event View – Start by creating a simple event shape, for example, to focus on a single event frame and one element referenced by the event frame. Add element attributes that can provide more context for the event data to the asset shape. The Matches pane keeps track of the assets, attributes, and event frames that match the shape.

   • Streaming View – Start by creating a simple shape, for example, to find a single asset. The Matches pane is a preview of the elements that are found in the PI AF database that match your shape.

2. Preview your data set.

   The preview shows a subset of the information. It is built from the first ten matches and uses the first 100 records for each match. Therefore, you may not see all the data you expect. The purpose of the preview is to give you an idea of what the data looks like so that you can determine what additional data to include to provide context or how to exclude rows and focus on the data you are interested in.

3. (Streaming views only) Specify the schema used to send the messages and how the message is triggered.

4. Refine your data set.

   There is a lot of flexibility in how the final data set can be manipulated to produce the desired results. You can do the following:

   • Modify how the data columns/data fields are displayed

   • Add data columns/data fields

   • Add time columns/time fields

   • Add calculations on a column or field

   • Filter the data to only include the data you are interested in

   • Specify how the data is retrieved (summarized, interpolated, or exact values)

     Note: Columns applies to asset and event views and fields applies to streaming views.

5. Publish the data to a publish target.

   Data can be published once or published on a schedule.

6. View your data in your preferred BI tool.

For more detailed procedures start with one of the following:

• Create an asset view

• Create an event view

• Create a streaming view