Technical Reference

Tags and the Project Database

About tag integration

Tag integration allows you to directly integrate tags from a third-party control application or device into your IWS project.

Tag integration is an enhanced framework for device communication. It is built on the same communication drivers that are described in the

Drivers section, but instead of manually configuring

driver worksheets to associate project tags with device registers, you can use the Object Finder to browse the device registers and add them directly to your project.

Registers added in this way appear as tags in the Shared Database

folder. They are "live" — that is, they are continuously and bilaterally updated during run time as long as the source is also running and properly connected — and they can be used anywhere in your project that you would normally use project tags.

These tags count against your target system's tag limit only when you use them in your project. This is different from the driver worksheets, where you might create a group of tags in order to associate them with device registers but then never actually use them in your project.

Tag integration is configured in the

Communication

tab of the project settings.

This feature is supported only for certain third-party control applications and devices, because additional work is required to upgrade an existing communication driver for tag integration. However, many of the communication drivers included with InduSoft Web Studio can be upgraded, so if you do not see the one you want, then please contact your software vendor and ask about custom development.

Tip: By default, the project runtime will update integrated tags every 600 milliseconds, which is the rate at which the system tag

BlinkSlow toggles. To adjust the rate, manually edit the project file (projectname .APP) to add the following entry:

[Options]

MainDrvAlwaysTrigger=tagname

tagname can be either another

system tag

(e.g.,

BlinkFast, Second, Minute) or a tag that you have created. Whenever the value of the tag changes, the integrated tags will be updated.

This works because the project runtime automatically creates a virtual

Main Driver Sheet

to manage the integrated tags. Please keep in mind that the same trigger is used by all Main Driver

Sheets in your project.