GE

Intelligent Platforms

The Advantages of Enterprise Historians

vs. Relational Databases
Comparing Two Approaches for
Data Collection and Optimized
Process Operations
By David Frede, Global Marketing Manager, GE Intelligent Platforms
If youre like most industrial businesses, the volume
of data you have to manage is massive. And to
stay competitive, you need to understand and
control your operations by efficiently c ollecting
critical data and maximizing its value.
Optimized industrial big data enables better and
faster decision-making, increased productivity
and reduced costshelping you drive continuous
improvement, operational excellence and a safe
supply chain.

About Dave:
Im a firm believer that
industrial big data
creates possibilities that
significantly enhance the
way companies operate.
As GE Intelligent Platforms
Global Marketing
Manager for Industrial
Data Intelligence, I help
companies understand
and leverage the value
of their industrial data
for optimized business
performance.

GE
Intelligent Platforms

Leveraging Industrial Big Data

So, you have tons of raw data. Where do you go from there? Enterprise h
istorians
can help you effectively leverage raw data from devices such as sensors, IEDs,
meters, and other real-time systems to improve production. They offer a clear
value proposition for logging, storing, and retrieving high volumes of process
time series data, while relational databases (RDBs) are designed to manage
relationships between contextualized data collected by enterprise historians.
Lets explore the advantages of enterprise historians over RDBs for data
collection and time-series data optimization.

Enterprise historians

Relational Databases

They maximize the power of time series data

and excel at answering questions typically
needed for real-time decisions in production
such as:

They help support simple operator

queries, answering questions such as:

How much fuel did gas turbine #1 use per

MWh of output today?
6 What was todays hourly unit production
average compared to where it was a year ago
or two years ago?
6

What customer had the largest

energy demand?
6 What customer ordered the largest
shipment?
6

GE
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Advantages of an Enterprise Historian

40

Enterprise historians use standards such as Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control
(OPC), which facilitates communications by providing a consistent method of accessing data
across devices. For example, GEs Proficy Historian
can collect large volumes of real-time process information from various control devices at incredibly high speeds of up to hundreds of thousands
of samples per second.
Faster Speeds
An enterprise historian provides a much faster read/write performance over an RDB and
down to the millisecond resolution for true
real-time data. This capability enables better

35
Effective bytes per sample

Built-in Data Collection That Leverages OPC

and Specific Built-In Drivers to the Legacy
or Non-Standard Equipment
Collecting data with efficiency is a critical
component for increasing operational visibility. Enterprise historians include built-in data
collection capabilities and can capture data from
multiple sensors and real-time systems, whereas
RDBs do not and require custom code to insert
and update records, which drives up costs and
time to solution.

Comparing the disk

space efficiency of an
RDB vs. Proficy Historian

30
25
20
15
10

n With no compression at all, an enterprise historian like

GEs Proficy Historian offers much higher disk space efficiency than an RDB. It enables archives to be automatically created, backed up, and purgedwith up to 256 GB
in a single archive with no hard limits on the number of
archivesenabling extended use without the need for a
database administrator. When using a 1% dead band compression, it delivers even greater efficiency for enhanced
performance and reduced maintenance.
This data represents a specific test on 400,000 samples logged to a standard
RDB and Proficy Historian. Results will vary depending on the raw data set
used and the RDB schema employed.

5
RDB

Proficy Historian Proficy Historian

(no compression) (1% compression)

r esponsiveness by quickly providing the granularity of data needed to analyze and solve intense
process applications.
In contrast, the modest performance of RDBs is
suitable in terms of supporting simple o
perator
queries such as viewing recent value trends
in flows, temperature, or other analog values. Furthermore, RDBs can require significant
custom engineering for each defined access and
have comparatively slow performance when
the queries cover large data sets or associated
periods of time.

GE
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Higher Data Compression
The powerful compression algorithms of enterprise historians enable you to store years of
data easily and securely online, which enhances
performance, reduces maintenance and lowers
costs. For example, you can configure GEs Proficy
Historian without the active maintenance and
back-up routines that a traditional RDB requires.
With an RDB, the maintenance alone can be a
full-time job because you have to continually
manage archives and disk space due to the lack
of compression; performance can be severely undermined, even with proprietary, pre-compressed
data workarounds. Additionally, theres no online
maintenance so tag imports and maintenance

Some historians are designed

to help address strict regulatory
requirements such as the FDAs
21 CFR Part 11 by implementing
electronic signatures, a feature
not offered in an RDB.

must be performed during scheduled downtime

requiring additional resources, time and costs.

Robust Redundancy for High Availability
Historian technology offers clustering at the data
store as well as another level of redundancy at
the collector function, which is a critical component. For mission-critical data collection points,
the collectors themselves can be configured in a
redundant fashion. Some historians even feature
a store and forward capability, which buffers
data at the collector should a disruption occur
ensuring no data loss.
RDBs can offer high availability for data stored
through clustering, but they are vulnerable to
data collection and network availability.
If the collection function resides with the server,
there may be vulnerability with the network that
connects it to the data source; if the collection
function is written to exist at the data source,
there may be vulnerability with that computer
compromising data availability.
Quicker Time to Value
When installing an enterprise historian, you can
normalize the implementation, using standard interfaces to decrease implementation

You can cut implementation time

by about 50% using standard
interfaces for an enterprise historian.

time by approximately 50%. You also dont need

to m
anage or create data schemas, triggers,
stored procedures or viewsresulting in quick
installation and configuration without specialized
services such as custom coding or scripting.
However, implementing an RDB can be a timeintensive and costly process because you have
to create and manage custom tables to install
the solution. Additionally, because IT resources
typically manage RDBs, changes need to be
approved by the team.

GE
Intelligent Platforms

Enabling Process Improvements

Enterprise historians tie together islands of
automation information without compromising
data resolution, providing a window into your
operations. They serve as the vital link between
site operations and business systems, p
roviding
an integrated view of your operations with
accurate, real-time information.
You can easily integrate with OLE DB-aware
applications and query the data, alarms
and events, and system and administrative
information using standard SQL commands.
Its also easy to generate reports and share
information across your enterprise using
standard web browser tools.

Utilities can review historical events,

analyze the data prior to operational
changes like switching, and determine
if limitations on equipment will be
exceeded, addressing questions
such as:
What was the steam temperature
over the last hour and how did this
relate to our heat rate?

How did the load spike when

we ended our load curtailment
operations?

Can we directly tie our Volt-Var

responses to wholesale purchases?

Are we approaching the t heoretical

line loading limits for this
transmission line?

Manufacturers can use historian data

to identify trends and uncover root
causes, answering questions such as:

What was the temperature over for

the last batch of product?

How much energy was consumed

yesterday?

Do these process variables have

any correlation?
What was my process doing when
I noticed this quality issue?

What caused that downtime incident?

How do the process parameters from

this batch compare to the ideal batch
that I ran a year ago?

GE
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The Power of Data Analytics

You cannot predict what data you

will need to answer the next issue,
and historian technologies give you
the flexibility to collect all the data.

Lets face it, without data you cant have a

nalytics.
Like black box recorders for your plant, enterprise historians capture all of your raw data and
provide the first level of context time to it, which
can then be leveraged by additional operations
management applications.
This data provides the next level of context for

solutions related to areas such as downtime,

OEE, quality, and genealogy.
With these solutions, you can build models
that further interpret historian data, providing
additional context and storing it away into
an RDB application for improvements across
the enterprise.

GE
Intelligent Platforms

Why does line 1 on

shift 2 have excessive
downtime?

Why does plant 1

outperform plant 2?
n Maximize the v alue
of your data with
contextualization to
understand what is
happening and why
across your enterprise.

Value of data

What was going on

with the process before
the downtime events?

Process context

Contextualization of data

Enterprise

GE
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Data Optimization Starts Here

Achieving operational excellence requires you to
collect and optimize vast amounts of industrial big
data from across your operations for true process
visualization. While RDBs are designed to manage
relationships between contextualized data, enterprise historians are built specifically for process
data acquisition and presentation, offering key
advantages to maximize the value of your data.
Are you ready to optimize your industrial big data
for a competitive advantage?

Get started with GE.

About GE Intelligent Platforms

GE Intelligent Platforms provides industrial software, control systems and embedded computing platforms to optimize our customers assets and equipment. Our goal is to help our customers grow the
profitability of their businesses through high performance solutions for todays connected world. We
work across industries including power, manufacturing, water, mining, oil & gas, defense and aerospace.
A division of GE, we are headquartered in Charlottesville, VA.
GE Intelligent Platforms Contact Information
Americas: 1 800 433 2682 or 1 434 978 5100
Global regional phone numbers are listed by location on our web site at www.ge-ip.com/contact

www.ge-ip.com/historian
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