Log, Note, and Report

Fundamental Components of Every Report:

Reports are not just pieces of paper created by a reporting engine. Whenever you have all three of the following components, you have the essentials of a report. Viewed this way, you have many options.

A selection of data, collected for the purpose of a report.

This includes raw data from any I/O tag, processed data from VTScada analytic tags, driver quality statistics, alarm history, and operator notes. It can also include data pulled from outside sources.
In all cases, data stored within VTScada is logged using Historian tags, which offer several configurable options.

A process that calculates, filters and summarizes the raw data into meaningful information.

Sometimes you will want to see raw data as it was stored, but most often you will want to filter and summarize the information to identify trends or statistics.
VTScada's report generation tools provide a selection of ways to process information as it is retrieved. Analytic tags will do that processing before storage. If using a third-party reporting program, you might choose to export raw data for later processing using that program's tools.

The presentation of the information in a way that is appropriate to inform a target audience.

Options include the Historical Data Viewer (trend graph), the Reports Page where you can build reports, and a variety of tools to extract VTScada's data for processing and display in third-party programs.

Reports are not only those things created by report generators. This discussion takes a much broader view, where report generators are only one tool of many available to help you turn raw data into useful knowledge. Anything that achieves these three fundamental components can be considered a report. If your goal in creating a report is to take information that's on the screen and put it onto paper, why use a report generator when you can just click the print button from any VTScada page?

Choose Your Reporting Solution

Your choice of reporting solution will be influenced by the trade-off between several factors.

  • Whether the data for the report is found entirely within VTScada or if it is a mixture of data from several sources.

  • The amount of processing required to turn the raw data into meaningful information.
  • The amount of formatting required to present the information properly in your reports.
  • The skills and knowledge at your disposal. Any given solution may require knowledge of VTScada, VTScada's scripting language, VBA, SQL, and third-party programs.
  • The expense you are willing to make for third-party programs that provide either extra features or greater ease-of-use for reporting.
  • The time at your disposal for creating customized reports and learning new skills that may be required for a given reporting solution.

Integration With Third-Party Reporting Tools

You have several options for using third-party reporting tools with VTScada: