Unified Data Browser

The GENESIS64 Unified Data Browser is a central tool in the application suite and is more commonly called the Data Browser. The Data Browser typically appears when you click the ellipsis button on a property that requires some kind of sourcing.

The Data Browser can read the various GENESIS64 databases and present the information contained in them for selection and further use. The browser also can browse and display the OPC UA address space and present to the user all of the tags and data sources, as well the specific data items and registers that are contained within them.

Since OPC UA communicates with older OPC data protocols such as OPC-DA, OPC-HDA, OPC-AE, OPC-XML-DA, OPC-DX, OPC-Security, and OPC-Batch the data that you see contains not only the newer OPC UA server data, but these additional data sources as well.

There are several places where you can open the Unified Data Browser, including:

• Ellipsis buttons found in the Properties and Preferences tabs and in dialog boxes.

• Browse buttons found in various dialog boxes.

The Data Browser contains multiple tabs for navigation including:

• OPC UA Tab
• Global Aliases Tab
• Language Aliases Tab
• Language Conversions Tab
• Expression Tab

When you make a selection in the Data Browser that selection is entered into the location that required it. Any entry that the browser makes could have been directly entered into the field without the use of the browser. For example, if you needed to use the localsim function rampup you could have directly typed localsim:ramp into the Data Source field (or whatever field you needed). However, the Unified Data Browser helps you in the following ways:

• Syntax. It returns the expression in the correct syntax. You might have forgotten that you needed the colon and used a period instead. The browser eliminates this type of error.

• Spelling. The spelling of the object or function is returned correctly. You can't make the mistake of using localsim:rump instead.

• Selection. Only those items that can be browsed can be selected. You can't enter a tag that isn't available to you from the browser, at least at the time of the selection.