When connecting to an OPC DA or OPC HDA server on a remote machine, Microsoft’s DCOM technology is used.
Microsoft is due to release an update to harden DCOM connectivity which requires OPC DA and OPC HDA clients like XLReporter to use higher level authentication to connect.
To account for this, in the Settings of the OPC DA and OPC HDA connectors, the Use Packet
Integrity Authentication Level option is provided. If the DCOM hardening has been applied to the
machine where the OPC DA or OPC HDA server is running, this option should be checked.
A new connector that manages multiple tables in a database to make them appear as a single table.
This approach avoids complex database “joins” and makes the retrieval of data efficient. From a
user’s perspective, data access is selected from a single tag browser displaying columns across all the
tables.
The Historical values (wide multi-table) connector now provides an interface to specify which tables
and views to browse and request data from in the database connected to. Each table and view can be
set with a Friendly Name to help users identify where to get their data from
The current Historical Values (narrow) connector is used for “narrow” data tables that only contain a
single data column. This new connector expands the functionality to handle narrow tables that have
multiple columns of data.
The Historical values (narrow multi-column) connector now provides an interface to specify the tag
table and data table settings for all the tables and views to consider in the database for the connector.
Each data table/view can be set with a Friendly Name to help users identify where to get their data from.
Email and SMS
Data Export to Database
In an effort to bolster email security, Microsoft is phasing out basic authentication to the Office 365
SMTP server in favor of more advanced, modern authentication methods.
To account for this, the Email and SMS application has been updated so that the Office 365 SMTP
server can still be used as your mail server by using the OAuth2 authentication method.
For more information, see Deprecation of Basic authentication in Exchange Online on Microsoft’s
website.
Data Management
Data Export to Database
This is an enhancement to the existing export capability where data in a report is exported to a
database. When exporting is performed to Microsoft SQL Server database, a Bulk Copy is available to
exports a range of values to the database quickly and efficiently.
Function
The Function Category provides a collection of functions to perform tasks not easily available in
spreadsheets. For instance, this category offers TimeStamp Convert which converts Universal Time
(UTC) to local time and vice versa, accounting for daylight savings adjustments.
Custom
The Custom Category is for users who wish to integrate their own business logic by providing them in
.NET classes. XLReporter orchestrates the transfer of raw data from the report to the external .NET
class for processing and places the output of the class onto the report.
Improvements/Issues Fixed
Alarm Module
Increased Performance
A performance increase is provided by the alarm module when used against the Rockwell Alarms and Events database.
Siemens WinCC/PCS7 Alarms
In some cases, when requesting alarm data from the WinCC/PCS7 alarms database an error would occur about the syntax of the query.
Client Wait Time
If requests to a database took longer than 20 seconds a timeout error would be returned regardless of the Client Wait Time set in the connector.
No Alarms Message
When scheduled, if no alarms were logged over the time period requested a popup message could appear which would halt schedule execution.
Database Consolidator
Timeout
If requests to the source database took longer than 20 seconds a timeout error would be returned regardless of the Client Wait Time set in the connector.
Missing Data
If the Source Date Storage is set to utc, after the initial consolidation of data, records from the beginning of the next request were not being logged to the Target Table.
Data Entry Forms
When used from a Windows Client, if the table for the data entry form contained a reserved word in
the database, an error would appear when the form was selected. For example, if the table contained a
column named Level, the error would read “The LEVEL clause includes a reserved word or argument”.
Design Studio
The import template option now supports importing existing Excel files with .xls and .xlsm file extensions.
For older manual data entry form templates, a Save As action would cause the studio to crash.
FTP Transfer
When uploading to an FTP Server, if the Clear Folder before transfer setting was checked on the
Target tab and no files in the Target Folder matched the Source Filter specified, a “Failed to clear
target folder” error message could be returned.
On-Demand Reports
When selecting a tag with no description in an On-Demand Report, changing Display to Description
and back to Name or Nickname would remove the tag from the panel.
Template Library
Any template configured for historical data connectors now lists analytic and manual data entry connectors to select.
In addition, when either of these is selected a second option is available to specify which analytic or specific data entry form to use.
The Chart Recorder library templates have been completely revamped.
Windows Client
Manual Data Entry
When running the Manual Data Entry application on a Windows client, if connection to the network where the server is running is lost,
the application does not close down, preserving any data that has been entered. Once network connectivity is restored and the client
is logged back in, data in the form can be stored to the database.
Web Portal
If the web portal was configured to an https protocol, when attempting to view reports published in HTML format, an error would appear indicating the file does not exist.