Variable Setup in Hach WIMS to support the Q13514 Citect Interface

Parent Article

The image below shows the edit / view Variables screen that allows the user to change the information that defines variables in Hach WIMS. To allow an interface to import data into WIMS you must associate the variable with an interface.  To do that select the System Setup menu in WIMS then select the Edit/View Variables sub-menu, the Hach WIMS window shown in the screen shot below will be displayed (of course, the details will vary with your instillation).

After navigating to the variable of interest (the one you want to receive the data from the interface) you select the Interface tab (the right arrow in the image). Then you can select the "Interface To" option then select this interface by selecting the name you assigned to it in the Server-Side Interface Setup screen. After selecting the interface the blank section in the bottom half of the screen will be filled in and look like the image below.

The first thing to do is to fill in the Tag, Statistic and Scale Factor section of the Interface tab area.  By clicking the "?" button next to the Tag text box a screen will come up that assists in gathering and formatting the data for this field.  A "Tag" is text that tells the interface where to get the data.  In this case the tag has the table name, the column where the data is and the column that holds the time of the reading.

The following image shows the browser window that helps the user create the tag in the proper format. The format has this structure: TABLE:FIELD1:FIELD2.  Where TABLE refers to the table that holds the required data.  FIELD1 is the field (or column) in the table that holds the readings of interest. FIELD2 is the field that holds the time of the reading or sample.

When the user selects the table, the fields for that table are added to the selection for the Tag Field Name and Date/Time Field Name drop down boxes. After selecting options in all drop down boxes the tag will appear in the status box at the bottom of the form.  However, clicking on the OK button the browser will place the tag text in the Tag text box back in the WIMS application.

The following table outlines the Statistic options for the values specified in the Tag field.

TAG STATISTIC	COMMENTS
AVERAGE	Take the average of the data points in the time period.
TOTAL	Take the sum total of all values in the specified time period.
MINIMUM	Take the minimum value in the specified time period.
MAXIMUM	Take the maximum value in the specified time period.
FIRST	Take the first good reading in the time period.
LAST	Take the last good reading in the time period.
DIFF	This statistic calculates the difference between the first value and the last value for the period requested (i.e., if the variable is defined as an hourly variable, DIFF will get the first and last values for each hour and subtract them).
RANGE	This calculates the range of your values for a specified period. It calculates the difference between the minimum and maximum values for the period requested.
INVENTORY	Returns the total use based on a tank level signal.  For example, the level is 10 feet at midnight and slowly goes down to 2 feet at 2:00PM then gets filled to 15 feet and slowly goes down to 8 feet at midnight.  The inventory function would return 15 ((10 –2) + (15 – 8)).
TIMEGT(n)	Returns the number of minutes the value was greater than n (i.e. value specified in parentheses).  Example TIMEGT(5), returns number of minutes tag > 5.
TIMELT(n)	Returns the number of minutes the value was less than n (i.e. value specified in parentheses).  Example TIMELT(5), returns number of minutes tag < 5.
TIMEEQ(n)	Returns the number of minutes the value was equal to n (i.e. value specified in parentheses).  Example TIMEEQ(1), returns number of minutes tag equals 1.
COUNT	This will count the number of data points for a given tag over a specified period of time.

The following table outlines the filter operators that can be used with the Filter Tag.

Filter Operators	Nomenclature
<, >, =, <=, >=, <>	Summarize values based on statistic when the Filter Tag is <, >, =, <=, >=, or <> to the Filter Value.  The filter will only pass values defined in the filter tag that satisfy this condition.
CyclesTo	Summarize values based on statistic when the Filter Tag changes to Filter Value.  When the value specified by the filter tag matches this filter value that value is saved in WIMS.