In the latest release of CSWorks, we have improved Historical Data Server performance. Let's see what History Recorder is capable of now.

Environment

CSWorks 1.2.3730.0
Server: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 4 GB RAM, Windows 7

Set-up

1. Install SQL Server 2008 Express on your server machine.

2. Create database "CSWorks"

3. Create HistoricalData table - see "createCommand" parameter of in CSWorks.Server.HistoryRecorderService.exe.config.

4. Configure SQL Server data source and make it active in CSWorks.Server.HistoryRecorderService.exe.config:

<dbTargetConfig>
  <dbTargets activeDbTarget="Standard SQLServer DbTarget">
    <dbTarget name="Standard SQLite DbTarget" ...
      ...
    />
    <dbTarget name="Standard SQLServer DbTarget"
      providerInvariantName="System.Data.SqlClient"
      connectionString="Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress; Initial Catalog=CSWorks;user id=sa;password=...;"
      createCommand="..."
      writeCommand="..."
      maintenanceCommand="delete top (300000) from HistoricalData ..."
      maxObservationAge="600"
      writeInterval="1"
      maintenanceInterval="30"
      maxQueryLength="65535"
      queryDelimiter=";"
      writeTxnBeginCommand="..."
      writeTxnCommitCommand="..."
    />
  </dbTargets>
</dbTargetConfig>

Please note we tell History Recorder to keep alarm event records in the database for 10 minutes only, and we perform record cleaning every 30 seconds. This only because our SQL Server is not capable of taking heavy load.

5. Restart History Recorder service. Make sure events are now written to CSWorks database (run "select * from HistoricalData" to confirm it).

6. Using cscript tool, run a script that generates 2000 historical data points:

function main()
{
  var areas = 200;
  var dpsInArea = 50;

  for (i = 0; i < areas; i++)
  {
    var areaId = i.toString();
    while(areaId.length < 4)
    {
      areaId = "0" + areaId;
    }

    WScript.Echo("<!-- area 0000" + areaId + "-AAAA-0000-0000-000000000000 -->");

    for (j = 0; j < dpsInArea; j++)
    {
      var dpId = j.toString();
      while(dpId.length < 4)
      {
        dpId = "0" + dpId;
      }
      dpId = areaId + dpId;
      WScript.Echo("<dataPoint id='{00000000-0000-0000-0000-0000" + dpId + "}' description='Tank fill - " + dpId + "' expression='tank1-" + dpId +"'/>");
    }
  }
}

main();

7. Copy generated historical data point descriptions to RecorderDataPoints.xml:

<dataPoints>
  ...
  <dataPoint id='{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}' description='Tank 1 fill - 0000' expression='tank1-0000'/>
  ...
  <dataPoint id='{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000001999}' description='Tank 1 fill - 1999' expression='tank1-1999'/>
</dataPoints>

History Recorder will pick up the change in a couple of seconds and will start saving observation for those 2000 data points to the database. Give our setup some time to stabilize.

Results

After 10 minutes, History Recorder maintains about 3.5 million observation records in the database and writes about 6000 observation records every second on average. Database file size is between 1 and 1.5 gigabytes. Here is a screenshot with Performance Monitor and DbgView windows:

Since our test live data changes in a very predictable way, there is a clear pattern in observation recording on the top perfmon chart. History Recorder memory consumption is under control too. Tracing shows that History Recorder deletes between 120000 and 270000 "obsolete" observations every 30 seconds. As you may have noticed, the maximum number of record it is allowed to delete in one shot is 300K, see 'maintenanceCommand' parameter above. Our setup is properly balanced, so History Recorder does not reach this limit.

If you add more historical datapoints and make total count, say 5000, you may end up in a situation when History Recorder simply cannot write all collected observations in a timely manner, and they will accumulate in the memory buffer. Major symptom will be growing memory consumption by History Recorder. CSWorks 1.2.3800.0 introduces "Write Buffer Size" performance counter that shows current number observations to be written to the database by HistoryRecorder, so this overload scenario becomes more obvious.

Summary

Please plan your historical data management carefully. Use scalable database engine, and give it a lot of spare CPU resources. Use multiple History Recorder machines if needed. If the amount of data is extremely big, use multiple databases and apply partitioning technique described in CSWorks documentation.

Resizable controls - what's the problem?

To save HMI screen space, application developers may want to make some controls resizable. Applying ScaleTransform is not a problem and is a good solution in many cases. See Pipes and Tanks Demo for example - it uses ScaleTransform and redraws screen content when a user changes browser window size.

Unfortunately, ScaleTransform is not an optimal solution when dealing with complex UI elements, especially those containing some amount of text - some pieces may look ugly, some may become too small to be useful. The only solution is to make complex controls able to react to the 'SizeChanged' event and recalculate internal layout at runtime. Latest version of Alarm Summary and Trend Control can do that, and this post shows how application developers can use this functionality.

We will need a container control that lets user change its size, and a piece of code that passes the changes to CSWorks controls. You can develop your own container control (there are a lot of examples available in the web) or use an existing third-party container control for that. I will use RadWindow from Telerik in this example - it serves the purpose quite well.

Resizable Alarm Demo

1. Download Rad Controls for Silverlight trial package from www.telerik.com (DLLs only).
2. Unzip downloaded archive to "C:\Program Files\CSWorks\Demo\Src\tps\Telerik". Telerik DLLs will be unpacked to "C:\Program Files\CSWorks\Demo\Src\tps\Telerik\Binaries\Silverlight\".
3. Open Alarm Demo project ("C:\Program Files\CSWorks\Demo\Src\AlarmDemo\") in Visual Studio.
4. We will use RadWindow control implemented in Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll. Add Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll and Telerik.Windows.Controls.dll to the reference list for Alarm Demo project.
5. Open Page.xaml file. Add 'telerik' namespace to the UserControl element:

<UserControl ...
  xmlns:telerik="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation"
... >

6. Replace control content with a grid that contains RawWindow that contains CSWorks Alarm Summary, and add SizeChanged event handler for RadWindow:

<Grid>
  <telerik:RadWindow x:Name="radWindow" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged">
    <telerik:RadWindow.Header>
      <TextBlock Text="Alarm Demo"/>
    </telerik:RadWindow.Header>
    <alarm:AlarmSummary ... />
  </telerik:RadWindow>
</Grid>

7. Open Page.xaml.cs file, implement SizeChanged event handler that adjusts AlarmSummary height and width when RadWindow size is changed: 

private void OnSizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e)
{
  GeneralTransform gtGlobal = alarmSummary.TransformToVisual(radWindow);
  Point leftTopGlobal = gtGlobal.Transform(new Point(0, 0));

  alarmSummary.Height = radWindow.Height - radWindow.BorderThickness.Bottom - leftTopGlobal.Y - 4.0;
  alarmSummary.Width = radWindow.Width - leftTopGlobal.X * 2;
}

8. Update Loaded event handler so RadWindow shows itself after page is loaded:

private void Page_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  ...
  radWindow.Show();
}

9. Rebuild the project and run Alarm Demo from Start Menu. Resize RadWindow and watch Alarm Summary changing its layout:

Resizable Trend

 You can do the same to CSWorks Trend control.

1. Open Trend Demo project ("C:\Program Files\CSWorks\Demo\Src\TrendDemo\TrendDemo.Sample.csproj")
2. Add Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll and Telerik.Windows.Controls.dll to the reference list.
3. Open MainPage.xaml file. Add 'telerik' namespace as shown above.
4. Change xaml so RadWindow contains TrendControl:

<Grid>
  <telerik:RadWindow x:Name="radWindow" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged">
    <telerik:RadWindow.Header>
      <TextBlock Text="Trend Demo"/>
    </telerik:RadWindow.Header>
    <t:Trend ...>
      ...
    </t:Trend>
  </telerik:RadWindow>
</Grid>

5. Open MainPage.xanl.cs. Add OnSizeChanged handler:

private void OnSizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e)
{
  GeneralTransform gtGlobal = _demoTrend.TransformToVisual(radWindow);
  Point leftTopGlobal = gtGlobal.Transform(new Point(0, 0));

  _demoTrend.Height = radWindow.Height - radWindow.BorderThickness.Bottom - leftTopGlobal.Y - 4.0;
  _demoTrend.Width = radWindow.Width - leftTopGlobal.X * 2;
}

6. Show RadWindow on startup:

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  ...
  radWindow.Show();
}

7. Rebuild the project and run Trend Demo from Start Menu. Resize RadWindow and watch Trend control changing its layout: 

From now on, Alarm Summary and Trend Control can have localized menus, buttons and messages. Norwegian happened to be the first non-English language - thanks to our partner company in Norway.

To set Silverlight application culture explicitly, you can create a 'localized' html file (say, 'MyAlarmSummary0234.no.html')that hosts your application and add 'culture' and 'UIculture' parameters to the Silverlight object. The following piece of Javascript code shows how to instantiate a Norwegian Silverlight application:

Silverlight.createObject("....xap",parentElement,"myPlugin", {width:'100%', height:'100%', ..., culture:'no', UIculture:'no'},{onError:null, onLoad:null }, null, null);

And this is what Alarm Summary looks like:

Update:

Starting from 1.4.3850, there is no more need to edit demo html files to run CSWorks demo application using specific cultures. Use "culture" URL parameter as described in this post.