Interface instances

In order to sort points into device buckets, you must set up your PI Interface information to indicate which points you would like to sort.

The interfaces dialog asks you to select which points (that is, points that share the same PI Server/Location1/Point Source combinations) to examine for sorting. You might choose to search all selected Data Archives for interfaces registered via the ICU or enter an Interface ID/Point Source combination manually. The resultant configuration information is stored in the Module Database as an XML file. A snippet of this file is shown here:

<CinterfaceEntry>
<m_sInterfaceName>piperfmon</m_sInterfaceName>
<m_sInterfaceType>piperfmon</m_sInterfaceType>
<m_sInterfaceID>1</m_sInterfaceID>
<m_sPointSource>#</m_sPointSource>
<m_sServerName>dusty</m_sServerName>
<alPointIndices />
<alScanClasses>
<string>00:00:05</string>
<string>00:01:00</string>
</alScanClasses>
</CinterfaceEntry>

Note that for interfaces which are registered with the ICU (as shown here) the scan classes are stored as well. This information will be displayed to the users on a per point basis in the point organizer.

The configuration files mentioned above are enough for the IT Organizer to get started; the IT Organizer uses the SDK’s GetPoints queries to find all the points on a server that fulfill the interface instance and point source criteria stored by the point selection wizard. The queries look like this:

PISDK.PointList plCurrent = oServer.GetPoints("pointsource = ‘" + sPointSource + "’ and location1 = " + sLocation1",null);

The resultant point list is then iterated through. Each point is examined using the regular expression for that interface type, and is thrown into its device bucket.