Release Notes R5.00.00

ObX Historian R5.00 Release Notes

🚀 ObX Historian R5.00

The Next Generation of Industrial Data Infrastructure

ObX Historian R5.00 represents one of the most significant upgrades in the platform's history. This release introduces a completely redesigned historian architecture, a modern web-based administration experience, advanced asset modeling capabilities, event-driven data management, and major performance enhancements designed to support enterprise-scale deployments.

Important: Due to major architectural improvements and platform redesigns, this release contains several breaking changes. Customers are encouraged to review all release notes and migration considerations before upgrading existing installations.

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Breaking Changes

ObX Historian

Completely Redesigned Web-Based Administration Platform

The traditional desktop administration tool has been replaced with a modern web-based administration portal, providing centralized management, improved accessibility, and enhanced operational visibility.

New Administration Features

📊 Dashboard

Gain instant visibility into your historian environment through a centralized dashboard.

Features include:

• Historian health monitoring
• Storage utilization metrics
• Database performance statistics
• Data ingestion rates
• System resource utilization
• Quick operational insights and diagnostics

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🌳 Tag Browser

Introducing a next-generation asset-centric tag management experience.

Features include:

• Tree-based asset hierarchy
• Digital representation of physical plant assets
• Structured navigation across millions of time-series tags
• Improved organization and discoverability
• Simplified tag administration and maintenance
• Asset-oriented data modeling

The Tag Browser enables users to transition from flat tag structures to a scalable enterprise asset framework.

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🗄️ Data Tables

A powerful new capability that extends ObX Historian beyond traditional time-series storage.

Features include:

• User-defined table schemas
• Flexible data governance models
• Manual data entry support
• Production and batch records
• Quality management data
• Laboratory information
• Operational logs
• Business contextualization data

Data Tables allow organizations to combine operational time-series data with contextual business information in a single platform.

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⚡ Events Engine

Automatically generate event records based on operational conditions and business logic.

Examples include:

• Equipment start/stop events
• Batch execution events
• Alarm transitions
• State changes
• Production milestones
• Custom script-based triggers

Benefits:

• Automated event capture
• Simplified batch reporting
• Reduced manual data entry
• Enhanced operational traceability
• Improved root-cause analysis

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💾 Backup Management

Enterprise-grade backup capabilities are now integrated directly into the administration portal.

Features include:

• Scheduled backups
• Manual backups
• Backup monitoring
• Simplified recovery workflows
• Reduced administrative overhead

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🔐 API Token Management

Secure integration with external systems through standardized REST APIs.

Features include:

• Token-based authentication
• Granular API access control
• Secure Read/Write operations
• Third-party application integration
• MES integration
• ERP integration
• Analytics platform connectivity
• Custom application development support

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New Historian Engine

ObX Historian R5.00 introduces an entirely new historian engine engineered for extreme scalability, performance, and reliability.

Performance Improvements

• Significantly faster data ingestion
• Improved query response times
• Reduced storage overhead
• Optimized memory utilization
• Enhanced concurrent client handling
• Improved compression efficiency
• Better high-frequency data processing

Enterprise Scalability

• Supports millions of tags per server
• Massive time-series data retention capabilities
• Designed for large-scale industrial deployments
• Improved horizontal scalability architecture
• Optimized for modern edge-to-enterprise data strategies

Enhanced Data Organization

Users can now benefit from two complementary data management approaches:

Asset Tree View

Ideal for:

• Equipment-based navigation
• Plant hierarchy modeling
• Asset-centric analytics
• Operational visibility

Table View

Ideal for:

• Structured business data
• Batch records
• Production records
• Laboratory information
• Operational reporting

This dual-model architecture provides greater flexibility than traditional historian platforms.

Reliability Enhancements

• Improved data integrity mechanisms
• Enhanced fault tolerance
• Better recovery capabilities
• Optimized write buffering
• Increased operational stability

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ObX Collector

Next-Generation Collection Engine

ObX Collector R5.00 introduces a completely redesigned collection architecture focused on scalability, performance, and enterprise asset modeling.

🌳 Asset Modeling Framework

Create reusable digital asset templates and deploy them throughout your organization.

Features include:

• Asset template creation
• Custom asset parameters
• Asset inheritance
• Reusable asset definitions
• Rapid deployment of large asset structures
• Seamless integration with Historian Tag Browser

Benefits:

• Faster project development
• Standardized asset models
• Reduced engineering effort
• Improved maintainability

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⚡ Optimized Data Buffering

Significant improvements have been made to edge-side data management.

Features include:

• Faster buffering engine
• Reduced local storage requirements
• Improved store-and-forward capabilities
• Better network outage resilience
• Enhanced synchronization performance

Benefits:

• Lower storage consumption
• Improved reliability
• Reduced infrastructure requirements
• Better remote-site performance

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📡 Real-Time Data Distribution

Collector can now distribute live industrial data to multiple systems simultaneously.

Supported protocols include:

• MQTT
• CoAP
• WebSocket

Use Cases:

• Real-time dashboards
• Cloud integrations
• Enterprise messaging systems
• Digital twin applications
• AI and machine learning platforms
• Custom industrial applications

Benefits:

• Reduced integration complexity
• Lower latency data delivery
• Improved interoperability
• Modern event-driven architectures

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📈 New ObX Excel Add-in

A completely redesigned Excel integration experience is now available in ObX Historian R5.00.

The new ObX Excel Add-in delivers significantly improved performance, enhanced usability, and a modernized data retrieval engine, enabling users to efficiently access, analyze, and report historian data directly from Microsoft Excel.

Key Enhancements

⚡ High-Performance Query Engine

The Excel Add-in now utilizes an optimized query architecture designed for faster retrieval of large historical datasets.

Benefits include:

• Faster data loading and refresh operations
• Improved handling of large time ranges
• Better responsiveness when working with millions of records
• Reduced waiting times for reports and calculations

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🎨 Modern User Interface

The user experience has been completely redesigned to simplify data access and report creation.

Features include:

• Streamlined navigation and workflows
• Improved tag and asset browsing experience
• Easier parameter configuration
• Enhanced report generation process
• Reduced learning curve for new users

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🌳 Asset-Aware Data Selection

Seamlessly browse and select historian data through the new asset hierarchy model.

Features include:

• Tree-based asset navigation
• Faster tag discovery
• Logical equipment organization
• Simplified selection of time-series data

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📊 Enhanced Reporting Capabilities

Create powerful operational and management reports directly within Excel.

Use Cases:

• Production reporting
• Energy monitoring
• Batch analysis
• KPI dashboards
• Regulatory compliance reports
• Maintenance and reliability reporting

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🔄 Improved Data Refresh and Connectivity

Designed for enterprise environments where reliability and performance are critical.

Benefits include:

• Faster refresh cycles
• More stable connections
• Improved handling of large datasets
• Better scalability for multi-user reporting environments

Business Value

The new Excel Add-in bridges the gap between industrial operations and business reporting, enabling engineers, operators, analysts, and management teams to transform historian data into actionable insights with greater speed and efficiency than ever before.

Summary

ObX Historian R5.00 delivers a major technological leap forward, introducing:

• Completely redesigned Web Administration Portal
• New Enterprise Historian Engine
• Asset-Centric Tag Browser
• Flexible Data Tables
• Automated Events Engine
• Integrated Backup Management
• Secure API Token Framework
• Enhanced Scalability for Millions of Tags
• New Asset Modeling Framework
• Optimized Data Buffering
• Real-Time Data Distribution via MQTT, CoAP, and WebSocket

This release establishes the foundation for the next generation of industrial data management, providing greater scalability, flexibility, and operational intelligence than ever before.

ObX Historian R4.01.00

🚀 Release Notes

ObX WebUI

Fixes

• Resolved issues related to deleting organizations.

Enhancements & New Features

• New Panels Introduced:
  • D3 Gauge Panel – Visualize values with a real-world gauge-style representation.

• Video Panel – Embed and display video content seamlessly.

• Pareto Chart Panel – A type of chart that highlights the most significant factors in a dataset by combining both bar and line graphs, typically used to prioritize problem-solving and identify the "vital few" from the "trivial many."

• Sankey Panel – Widely used for visualizing energy flows and resource distribution. Highly effective in Energy Management Systems (EMS).

• SCADAVis Panel – Enables SCADA-like graphical visualization for real-time monitoring and control.

• Business Forms Panel Improvements:
  • Manual data input has been simplified.
  • All submitted data is now securely stored directly in the ObX Historian.
    

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ObX Admin Tools

Enhancements & New Features

1. Improved Configuration Management

   • Importing and exporting configurations now includes Expression Tags and Users.
     

2. User Equalization

   • When importing configurations, if a user does not exist in the ObX Historian, the system can automatically generate the user for seamless integration.
     

3. Expression Tags (formerly Calculation Tags)

   • Expression Tags now support full JavaScript code, allowing users to leverage advanced Math libraries for complex calculations.

• Integration with CoolProp:
  • CoolProp is an open-source thermophysical property library for fluids and humid air.
  • It provides accurate calculations of properties such as enthalpy, entropy, density, and phase equilibria.
  • Benefits in ObX Expression Tags:
    • Enables advanced thermodynamic and fluid property calculations directly in scripts.
    • Supports engineering applications such as energy efficiency analysis, HVAC modeling, and process optimization.
      

4. Expression Recalculation
   • Users can now recalculate all Expression Tags for a specified time range.
   • Use Cases:
     1. Historian Recovery – If the ObX Historian is down but buffering is enabled, recalculation ensures missing Expression Tags are computed after data recovery.
     2. Backfilling Data – When creating new Expression Tags, recalculation allows historical results to be generated, even for time periods before the tag was created.
        

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✅ This release strengthens data visualization, thermodynamic computation, and historian management across the ObX ecosystem, empowering users with more reliable, flexible, and advanced tools.

ObX Historian R4.00.00

##Features and Fixes Added

ObX WebUI

1. New User Interface for easy Navigation and allow multiple sub folder.
2. New Alerting interface.
3. Multiple Theme preferences.
4. Dashboard Reporter (on demand or automatic with email delivery)

ObX Collector

1. Fix: Tag custom property stored as string in the historian.
2. Improved Tag subscription in the devicelist, based on the size of the page.
3. Fix: Historian error when the value = NaN
4. Improved devicePolling interval
5. fix: removed faceplate in Tagoptions

R3.20.00

Features Added

Excel Addin

1. Excel addin multiple tags in one query
2. Timestamp and value on item.
3. Refactored HTTP request to POST for optimized querying of data.
4. Auto spill =OData() based on the size of returned data.
5. Added Custom Query capabilities.
6. Added options for PaperSize and Orietation on Save Report.

ObX Collector

1. Collector to save a string value.
2. Removed capability of write tags in all devices (for added security).

ObX WebUI

1. Added new Tool ObX WebUI Backup and Restore Tool for easy backup and restore for dashboard configuration.
2. Refactored nginx config for obx historian proxy, from /db/live to /db/, this is in accordance to Excel Addin R3.20.00 refactored logic.