Creating a layer: Fields

You configure fields to determine which attributes from your PI system to use. The Template attribute fields section of the layer definition screen shows all of the attributes found using the PI AF template. See Field configuration and Specify element fields for more information about fields.

By default, the attributes are listed by attribute category. Uncheck the Show categories check box to list elements alphabetically.

You must specify one of the fields as a key field. The key is a unique identifier field for a map feature. Only string data types can be selected for the key field.

Note: It is important that you select a field that contains unique values for your key. Failure to use a unique key might result in errors if the key and element name combination is not unique.

Note: Capitalization is not preserved for field names. Field names within layers are converted to all lowercase characters except if you use an Oracle database as a back end. See Considerations when using Oracle database for more information.

Note: The Int64 data type is not fully supported by Esri client applications. If you create a layer that includes an attribute from PI AF that is defined as an Int64 data type, the field is converted to a string data type in the feature layer. Therefore, users can interact with this data only as a string and not as a numeric value when filtering, performing calculations, or other similar actions. See Esri Support for more information.

Only the "Basic" PI AF data types, such as numeric, string, and other simple data types, are compatible with PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS. To maintain compatibility with Esri ArcGIS, complex data types such as arrays and the non-specific Anything type are not supported. PI AF attributes that are configured with unsupported data types are not displayed when creating a layer.

Note: In the current version of PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS, PI AF attributes that are configured as excluded are assigned null values. For example, integers no longer default to zero, strings no longer default to an empty string, and so on. Existing feature services that do not allow null values for these excluded attributes must be re-created. If you used PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS Wizard in v2015 (or earlier versions) to publish to ArcGIS Online and have configured PI AF attributes as excluded, then you must re-create your feature services.

Use the following steps to configure the fields in the layer definition.

1. Specify whether the attribute should be included in the layer, its field name, and the function for each of the listed attributes.

   Note: Hyphens are not supported in table names or field names in ArcGIS. If your PI AF attribute names contain hyphens, they must be removed from the proposed field names to be created within the layer. See Esri Support for more information.

   Caution: OBJECTID is a reserved system name which cannot be used. The system might ask you to rename any attributes that have reserved names. If so, you can make a simple modification to the name such as adding a space (OBJECT ID) or adding a name (Esri OBJECTID).

2. Press Continue when finished.

   A message is displayed if an error is found with the configuration. Fix the error and try creating the layer again.

Continue to Creating a layer: Geometry to specify the geometry your layer uses, or see Field configuration and Specify element fields for more information about selecting and customizing the fields in your layer.