Trend Link

The philosophy behind the design of Trend Link was to make it easy for any user to get the data they need and format it the way they want. As a result, Trend Link is recognized by our clients as the easiest, most intuitive and versatile viewer on the market today. Trend Link makes it easy to select the tags you want to view in your chart, and to navigate around to find the data. Easy to use controls let you change the layout and appearance of your charts quickly and visually. Both real time and historical data can be viewed from the same chart, without having to reconfigure, reload, or switch screens. Most customers can begin to use Trend Link without lengthy training sessions.

Trend Link can get data from several data sources, the most common being OPC HDA (Historical Data Access), OPC DA (Data Access), and our own Canary Enterprise Historian. Trend Link lets you select a server (on your local or on a remote computer), then allows you to browse through the tags to select the ones you want to view. The appearance of the chart is changed by dragging the scales around and resizing them. You can also resize the legend area at the bottom. Going to a particular time is as easy as moving the cursor to the left or right, or scrolling through time. Colors, fonts, scaling, limits, formatting, grid lines and viewing orientation are some of the features that can easily be configured. Charts can be saved for viewing again later either by you, or another Trend Link user.

Trend Link is implemented as an ActiveX control. This means that it can be embedded in other programs that accept ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of automation interfaces are provided and documented. This lets you use scripting to control Trend Link through other applications. For example, Trend Link can be embedded into HMI displays and internet applications. Buttons can be programmed to have Trend Link display data so that plant operators don't have to be familiar with the program in order to use it.

"As a trending tool, we like the flexibility in how its configured and the ease of use. Users can drag and drop to add trends to the chart and save charts for later recall. The speed is a big plus, allowing users to quickly scan and find historical data they want to see. Users can access overview charts and then quickly drill down to see detailed data. The biggest advantage is the ease of use. The user doesn't have to be a genius to figure things out."
Kevin Moran, Systems Engineer, Delaware City Refinery