What is PI Integrator for Business Analytics?
What is PI Integrator for Business Analytics?
PI Integrator for Business Analytics (PI Integrator for BA) publishes PI System data to external systems like SQL Server, cloud data lakes, and BI tools — without custom coding.
What It Does
- Publishes AF data (elements, attributes, event frames) to relational tables.
- Supports SQL Server, Azure SQL, Snowflake, and other targets.
- Runs on a schedule or continuously for near-real-time updates.
- Handles schema changes and data type mapping automatically.
Common Use Cases
- Feed PI data into Power BI, Tableau, or Grafana via SQL.
- Build a data warehouse combining PI data with ERP/MES data.
- Create compliance reports that join process data with quality records.
- Enable data science teams to access PI data in Python/R via SQL.
Architecture
PI AF Server → PI Integrator → SQL Server → Power BI
→ Python/R
→ Custom Apps
Configuration
- Install PI Integrator on a server with AF SDK access.
- Open the PI Integrator Admin web interface.
- Create a publish set selecting AF elements, attributes, and event frames.
- Configure the target (connection string, schema, update frequency).
- Start publishing.
Alternatives
- PI OLEDB Enterprise: direct SQL queries (read-only, no materialized tables).
- PI Web API: REST-based access for custom integrations.
- Custom ETL: AF SDK + Python/C# scripts for specialized pipelines.
PI Integrator is the best choice when you need materialized, queryable tables of PI data in an external database.
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