FactoryTalk View SE 7.0 - Recipe with 2000 of REALs

[MrLeszo]

Hi All.
I need to manage (store, restore, download to PLC, upload from PLC) a recipe with big amount of data - 2000 TAGs. Recipe object in FTV SE can provide a management of datas, which are all on the same display, on numered "numeric input" fields. I need more tags, than is possible to place in one display (I have 5 arrays of 400 elements). Does anybody can help, please? Where can I start looking for knowledge and which software shall I aquire? I expect there must be some solution on SQL way, but I am little bit novice, especially on VBA..

Recipies must be on SCADA server. Recipe management cannt be on PLC.

[prushmere]

Hi.

Personally I wouldn't use the FTV Recipe Editor for 10 parameters, let alone 2000!

If you are not competent in VBA then an SQL solution will only cause you a world of pain as you have no other way of getting the information from the db into the display. What is your actual recipe structure? Does each recipe have 2000 parameters or do you have 5 recipes of 400 parameters each?

[MrLeszo]

Hi prushmere!

Thanks for Your answer.

One recipe containt 2000 tags, arranged to 5 tables of 400 tags each one. There is no relations between them. Of course, eachj recipe has to have a string name, so this is only relation. I just need to know which way shall I go. Do I need to use transaction manager or batch, as support says? I dont think so..

[prushmere]

Hmm, I've never used RSBatch so I can't really comment on whether it's of any use to you, sorry.

Unless there is a specific reason preventing you doing so, the easiest way that I can see would be to use 5 displays - each display containing one of the 5 tables, this would get you around the tag limit. If each table depends on the others you will need to add some additional logic to prevent the recipe being executed until all table entries have been confirmed. Although you say the recipe management cannot be done in the PLC, is there a reason you cannot use a temporary tag array in the PLC to hold the new values until the recipe is confirmed? Then you could simply copy the temporary data to the actual recipe data.

[MrLeszo]

Thanks!
however I cant download a tables on five display by click one button:(
I am trying now to find some solution just to store/restore data to SQL tables, bot I cant find how to communicate FTV SE database with SQL tables. If it is possible to access to sql from VBA code on display?

[prushmere]

That's why it would be helpful if you could use an array of temporary values in the PLC, each display would download its values to the temporary array and move to the next display. On the last display you would download the last table to the temporary array and then copy the whole array to the tables used for the recipe execution. One way or another you will need to have some sort of temporary storage, be it in the PLC or in a database, obviously using the PLC would be easier.

FTV will communicate quite happily with an SQL database using VBA if you want to go down that route. There are quite a few good tutorials on the web on how to do this, here is something to get you started.

http://www.mdobie.co.uk/2012/11/14/quer ... excel-vba/

There are also quite a few examples on the Rockwell Knowledge Base if you have access.

Note that you can't use the DB that FTV sets up during installation, this is used for the tag DB only - you must create a new SQL server instance to store or retrieve your own data.