Comparison with AlarmWorX64 Server

This section focuses on the general comparison to ICONICS AlarmWorX64 Server and focuses on the differences in the client AP and how it maps to the Hyper Alarm Server.

General

AlarmWorX64 Server	Hyper Alarm Server
Configuration for multiple servers can be stored in a single database	One configuration database per server
Flat list of alarm sources	Alarm sources initially organized in areas
Alarm sources can be linked to multiple areas	Currently not supported directly. If using AssetWorX integration, it is possible to use the AssetWorX links at the Equipment level to achieve similar functionality.
Templates	Alarm groups and alarm types – similar concept, but different from templates; AssetWorX Equipment Classes
Only real-time data input	Real time and historical data input (e.g. from HH)
RoC not working as people need it to	It is possible to use historical reads (e.g. from HH) to compute a RoC over a specific time period.
Runtime can change configuration database	Currently not supported. There are plans to support configured adjustable set points that behave similarly to cached Equipment Properties from AssetWorX.
Only 20 related values	Unlimited related values
C++/ATL	C# (portable to .NET Core, IoT, containers)
OPC AE	Fwx API (no OPC AE)
Integrated with AssetWorX through the Bulk Asset Configurator	Integrated with AssetWorX natively, Bulk Asset Configurator configures the Hyper Alarm Server through AssetWorX.

AlarmWorX64 Server Area Counters

Under each Area, the AlarmWorX64 exposes a fixed list of counters. Each of them comes in two variants: a recursive one, that includes alarms in the current and in any nested area, and a non-recursive variant. Hyper Alarm Server can define only recursive counters.

The following table lists the counters of AlarmWorX64 (only the non-recursive ones for brevity, although these can’t be implemented at all) together with the bits of BaseConditionType.NewState that the counter expression of Hyper Alarm Server needs to check in order to implement the same functionality.

The bit checks must not check for an exact match of the NewState field but must only check the bits specified. That means for example that to check for Active,Unacked the expression would look like this: x=({{BaseConditionType.NewState}} & 6) == 2.

Also, some of the counters are writable, and writing a zero to them has the effect of acknowledging all alarms under the area (recursively or on a single level) or to cause other state transitions to a set of alarms. This behavior is not supported by the Hyper Alarm Server at all currently.

Bits to Check	True/False ¹⁾	Simple Count	Maximum Severity
Acked	X	Area_Acked ²⁾	X
Unacked	Area_UnAcked	Area_UnAcked_Count	X
Active	Area_Active	Area_Active_Count	Area_MaxSeverity
Clear	X	Area_Clear_Count ³⁾	Area_MaxSeverity_Clear
Disabled	X	Area_Disabled_Count ⁴⁾	X
LatchAck	X	Area_LatchAck_Count	Area_MaxSeverity_LatchAck
LatchUnack	X	Area_LatchUnack_Count	Area_MaxSeverity_LatchUnack
OutOfService	X	Area_OutOfService_Count	Area_MaxSeverity_OutOfService
Shelve	X	Area_Shelve_Count	Area_MaxSeverity_Shelve
Supress	X	Area_Supress_Count	Area_MaxSeverity_Supress
Active,Acked	X	X	Area_MaxSeverity_Ack
Active,Unacked	X	X	Area_MaxSeverity_Alarm
Inactive,Unacked	X	X	Area_MaxSeverity_ NormalAndNotAcked

1) Hyper Alarm Server only supports the Simple count and Maximum severity counters. Simple true/false counters that only tell whether there is any alarm that matches the definition are not supported.

2) Area_Acked, Recusive_Acked - Not possible to implement. These counters include alarms in the Inactive Acknowledged state, which aren't trackable by alarm counters.

3) Hyper Alarm Server does not support the Clear state and the associated functionality. The Clear state in AlarmWorX64 Server works similarly to the Latch state defined in ISA 18.2.

4) Area_Disabled_Count, Recursive_Area_Disabled_Count – these counters can’t be implemented, as the Hyper Alarm Server does not work with disabled alarms the same way as the AlarmWorX64 Server does.

5) The table is missing Area_TagInput_Quality, Recursive_Area_TagInput_Quality – these tags are no counters and thus can’t be implemented using the Hyper Alarm Server Counters.

AlarmWorX64 Server Source Real-time Tags

Because each alarm source in AlarmWorX64 is a combination of individual conditions that can activate and clear individually, like the Alarm Limit, Digital, Alarm Deviation and the other, alarm sources expose counters, that tell how many of those conditions are active currently (Active_Count) or inform about the state of individual conditions (LIM_Active, DIG_Active, DEV_Active, …) and also exposes other tags that relate to just a specific condition (LIM_ActiveTime, …).

For brevity, this documentation will not list all the tag names, but replace the name of the condition with just condition and names of sub-conditions with subcondition_. That means that LIM_Active, DIG_Active, DEV_Active will collectively be referred to as condition_Active.

Counters

The Hyper Alarm Server does not combine individual conditions into the same Alarm source and for this reason does not need to and does not support counters on a single Alarm source. Here is an abbreviated list of such counters in AlarmWorX64 Server.

AlarmWorX64 Server	Hyper Alarm Server Approximate Equivalent Example
Active	x=({{alms:/Area1.Source1@NewState}} & 1) == 1
Active_Count	The same as Active
Clear_Count	The Clear functionality is not supported. Use Latch instead: x=({{alms:/Area1.Source1@NewState}} & 128) == 128
UnAcked_Count	x=({{alms:/Area1.Source1@NewState}} & 5) == 1
condition_Active	The same as Active
condition_Clear	The same as Clear_Count
condition_LatchAck	x=({{alms:/Area1.Source1@NewState}} & 132) == 132
condition_LatchUnack	x=({{alms:/Area1.Source1@NewState}} & 132) == 128
condition_UnAcked	The same as UnAcked_Count
subcondition_Active	Incorporate the evaluation of the @SubConditionName tag into the expression.

Event Fields

The Hyper Alarm Server exposes all event fields as real-time points, whereas AlarmWorX64 server only exposes this limited subset:

Tag Name	Notes
**condition_ActiveTime**	See next field.
**condition_ActiveTimeUTC**	Roughly corresponds to the BaseConditionType.ActiveTime (exposed as @ActiveTime) with some differences (the AlarmWorX64 DA tag resets (sets itself to year 1899) when the alarm is not active, while the event field keeps its value when the alarm is not active and not acknowledged.)
**condition_Alarm_State**	This is similar to the BaseConditionType.NewState, but the meaning of individual bits are different.
**condition_Time_In_Alarm**	Corresponds to the AlarmWorX64 specific TIME_IN_ALARM Field. It gets filled once the alarm changes to norm or to ack and shows how long it was active. Not supported by the Hyper Alarm Server, the client needs to compute this value as a difference between now and the @ActiveTime point.
**condition_Time_To_Respond**	Corresponds to the AlarmWorX64 specific TIME_TO_RESPOND Field. It gets filled once the alarm changes to active+ack and shows how long it was not acked. Not supported by the Hyper Alarm Server, but similar information could be extracted as a difference between now and the @AckTime point.

Configuration Tags

These tags expose the configuration of an AlarmWorX64 alarm source. Some of the tags are writable, making it possible to configure AlarmWorX64 from within GraphWorX64 or other clients.

The Hyper Alarm Server does not support configuring through its real-time client interface and there are currently no plans. It is still planned to enhance the Hyper Alarm Server with user adjustable set points though, which would work similarly to AssetWorX cached Equipment Properties.

These are the configuration tags exposed by AlarmWorX64.

Tag name	RO/RW	Notes
AutoAck	RW	Not configurable through Workbench, but seems to be writable through DA.
BaseText	RW
Delay	RW
HelpText	RO
Input1	RO
Name	RO
Off Delay	RW
ReAlarm	RW
ReAlarm Time	RW
Related Value XX	RW
Shelve Time	RW
**condition_Deadband**	RW
**subcondition_Enabled**	RW	0 writes an empty string into the limit field of the sub-condition, 1 writes the original value back
**subcondition_Limit**	RW
**subcondition_RequiresAck**	RW
**subcondition_MsgText**	RW
**subcondition_Severity**	RW

Runtime Control Tags

These are tags that do not fall into any of the other categories.

Tag name	RO/RW	Notes
ConfigurationLoaded	RO	No equivalent.
Input_Tag_Quality	RO	No equivalent.
Server Started	RO	No equivalent.
**condition_Acked**	RW	For reading, this information can be inferred from the @NewState point. Writing acknowledges the alarm, resets latch or moves the alarm in or out of a suppressed state. This can be accomplished using the corresponding method call.
**condition_OutOfService**	RW
**condition_Shelve**	RW
**condition_Supress**	RW
**condition_Latch_Reset**	RW

AlarmWorX64 Server Event Fields

This section describes event fields exposed by the AlarmWorX64 Server Alarms & Events Subscriptions (these fields are called Event Attributes per OPC AE specification).

Field Name	Alarm Types	Data Type	Notes
ACK_COMMENT	All	String	Comment from the regular “Acknowledge" operation. Gets reset only when alarm goes from normal to active. Implemented by AlmsBaseType.AckComment
ALARM_COUNT	All	Single	How many times the alarm went normal->active, this counter gets reset by acknowledging. Not implemented by the Hyper Alarm Server
ALARM_STATE	All	Int32	This is similar to the BaseConditionType.NewState, but the meaning of individual bits is different.
AREA	All	String array	Array of areas. Not implemented by the Hyper Alarm Server this way. The BaseEventType.Soruce name identifies the primary location of the alarm, e.g. "/Area1.Source1"
CALCULATED_CURRENT_VALUE	Deviation	Double	Specific to the Deviation alarm, computed as (Data Source) - (Data Source2), updates when the alarm sub-condition changes. ¹⁾
CFS_ASSIGNEDUSER	All	String
CFS_COMMENT	All	String
CFS_LATCHSTATE	All	Int32
CFS_LATCHSTATECOMMENT	All	String
CFS_LATCHSTATEUSER	All	String
CFS_STATE	All	Int32
CLEARED	All	Boolean	(not implemented)
CV	All	Double	Current Value (OPC Input 1 or 2). ¹⁾
DEADBAND	All	Double	Alarm detection Deadband. ¹⁾
DEFAULT_DISPLAY	All	String	¹⁾
DIGITAL_LIMIT_VALUE_EXCEEDED	Digital	Double	Specific to the Digital alarm, contains the threshold value that was exceeded and caused the alarm. This value is kept even when the alarm returns to the normal state and is reset only when the alarm enters the Inactive Acknowledged state. ¹⁾
HELP_TEXT	All	String	¹⁾
LIMIT_VALUE_EXCEEDED	LIM, DEV, ROC, TLA	Double	Contains the threshold value that was exceeded and caused the alarm. This value is kept even when the alarm returns to the normal state and is reset only when the alarm enters the Inactive Acknowledged state. ¹⁾
LOOP_DESC	All	String	Contains the text of the Base Text field. ¹⁾
NEXT_LIM	LIM, DEV, RLM	Double	Contains the HiHi limit, when the alarm is in the Hi sub-condition, and LoLo if in Lo. Keeps its value when transitioning to normal. ¹⁾
NORMAL_STATE	Digital	Boolean	Specific to the Digital alarm, contains the value of the normal state (just true or false). ¹⁾
PREV_LIM	LIM, DEV, RLM	Double	Contains the Hi limit, when the alarm is in the HiHi sub-condition, and Lo if in LoLo. Keeps its value when transitioning to normal. ¹⁾
PREVIOUS_VALUE	TLA	Double	Specific to the Trigger alarm, contains the previous value of the Data Source, updates every time the Data Source changes. This behavior can't be implemented by the Hyper Alarm Server Custom Fields.
PROGRESS	All	String	Comment from the "Report progress" acknowledge type. Not implemented by the Hyper Alarm Server.
RELATED_VALUE_01-20	All	Object	¹⁾
REQUIRES_CLEAR	All	Boolean	¹⁾
RLIM_LIMIT_VALUE_EXCEEDED	RLM	Double	Similar to LIMIT_VALUE_EXCEEDED, but specific to the Rate Limit alarms. ¹⁾
SP	Deviation	Double	Specific to the Deviation alarm, contains the value of Data Source 2, updates when the alarm sub-condition changes. ¹⁾
TIME_IN_ALARM	All	Double	Gets filled once the alarm changes to norm or to ack and shows how long it was active. Not supported by the Hyper Alarm Server, the client needs to compute this value as a difference between now and the BaseConditionType.ActiveTime field.
TIME_TO_RESPOND	All	Double	Gets filled once the alarm changes to active+ack and shows how long it was not acked. Not supported by the Hyper Alarm Server, but similar information could be extracted as a difference between now and the AlmsBaseType.AckTime field.

1) These fields can be fully or at least sufficiently replaced by Custom Fields in the Hyper Alarm Server.