HMI and Historian differ in operation but an integration of both can provide company operations with optimal value. The HMI integration with the Historian provides easier analysis of data, including troubleshooting, and regulatory compliance. Important benefits of using Historian along with HMI are listed below:
Data connection:
The historian can connect to HMI for data but be doing so can happen data holes, when HMI is in OFF state. Which means the data to HMI updates frequently this leads to losing data to store in the historian. So that the historian and HMI should be connected separately to the controllers such as PLC.
By connecting directly to the PLC source, there is an independent connection that still collects data on whether the HMI is running or not. Which provide data recovery and analysis even if the HMI lost power, connection or turned OFF.
Historian ease of use:
It is easy to access the Historian data through the HMI system via client applications that use Microsoft ActiveX controls or preferably Microsoft .NET applications. If operators and engineers could view how different values were moving and setpoints were being changed, they could identify the rippling effect through the entire system and determine problems and solutions more quickly.
Big data analytics:
The integration guidelines for the human-machine interface and the historian software should help organizations determine the best combination of data historian and HMI software components to turn big data into a great return on investment.
The integration helps aggregate, merge, and analyze big data collected and create a big return on investment (ROI). HMI/SCADA technology provides the ability to connect to an array of data sources and to visualize that data for monitoring and control.
Cloud-integrated storage:
The data historians can integrate with the latest in cloud-based technology. Industrial plant historian integrated with the cloud facilities can become even more scalable. Cloud facilities such as Microsoft Azure, allowing access to big data from any desktop, Web browser, or mobile device.
Enhanced data synchronization via logger-to-logger communications:
A premium data historian must also provide data logger to data logger communications, to aggregate and combine data from any plant historian server. This feature allows the servers of historians to exchange data hierarchically with other servers of a similar type or brand, as well as with third-party historians.
Powerful performance calculations:
Leading historians provide powerful performance calculation functions, which allow users to configure complex calculations that can be triggered periodically or at any data change event using a flexible set of date/time, math, string and history recovery functions an advanced analysis.
Extensive redundancy
Leading data historians support redundancy at all levels, including the use of remotely distributed data collectors, multiply distributed loggers, and multiple OPC classic and OPC UA interfaces.