Ignition 8.3.0: Universal Historian Solution, Event Streams, New Perspective Drawing Tools & So. Much. More!

Drumroll, please … IGNITION 8.3.0 HAS OFFICIALLY ARRIVED! The future of industrial automation is finally here, and it’s running in real time.

More than ever, this version of Ignition has “open” coded in its DNA, and it will empower you to do more with your data, scale swiftly, unify operations, customize easily, and rapidly build next-generation applications. 8.3 marks the beginning of a new era in industrial software, and is hands-down the world’s most advanced industrial integration platform for SCADA systems, MES, HMI, IIoT, and more.

So let’s unpack this technological bounty and explore the world of opportunities 8.3 opens up. With this major release, there are so many new features that the release train had to get reinforced steel plating to carry them all, so you might want to make yourself comfortable!

A Universal Historian Solution

In 8.3.0, you’ll be able to launch your time-series data history solutions into the future with a new historian system that includes a Historian Core Module and a SQL Historian Module.

The Historian Core Module contains the built-in Core Historian, which is an unparalleled historian product unlike any we’ve offered before. This QuestDB-powered historian requires zero database configurations, so as soon as you create a historian you can start using it immediately. It offers native data aggregation, archiving, deduplication, partitioning, data aliasing, and metadata support. Additionally, it brings more power to your history solutions, storing and querying data up to 10 times faster than Ignition’s previous internal tag history provider.

This module also contains a library of historian tools, including tools for rich data modeling, metadata storage, and leveraging data sources (like CSV files and database tables) as read-only historians, plus a data splitter, simulator, and more. Additionally, you get a streamlined, modern Historian API, which enables module authors to create custom historians for any use case, with any technology. Lastly, the legacy Internal Historian - SQLite is also included.

The other module in 8.3’s historian solution is the SQL Historian Module, which enables you to integrate Ignition with external SQL databases to create a high-performance historian. This SQL Historian is ideal for large-scale storage of historical information, and it automatically supports compression, partitioning, interpolation, and aggregation for any SQL database.

With the abundance of options in 8.3’s historian solution, you get the flexibility to choose the ideal historian for your needs. And soon we’ll be releasing even more historian types, which will expand your options even further.

Event Streams

With 8.3.0 also comes a new way to map event-driven data from a variety of sources, faster and easier than ever: the Event Streams Module.

Event Streams is extremely helpful for building complex event-driven architectures, enabling you to connect and manage data from external sources, all in one central place. You can use this exciting new tool to create data endpoints from tags, SQL databases, REST APIs, IIoT services, cloud providers, and other sources. And you’ll have the ability to map, filter, and route data between subsystems, so you can set up actions (like reacting to a change in a tag, for example) without having to write a bunch of code. Plus you can easily publish data to event brokers, message queues, buses, and more. And to make things super simple, there is just a single, drag-and-drop interface to accomplish all these tasks.

This new addition to Ignition is a powerful tool to help you build modern automation applications with real-time data pipelines, centralize events management, gain more flexibility for your data, and harness the full power of your data in a simple, elegant way.

Drawing Editor

In 8.3.0, Perspective is upgraded with a new state-of-the-art Drawing Editor that will unleash your creativity so you can design like a true automation artist. The new Drawing Editor also streamlines your workflow, with the ability to create, edit, and animate vector graphics natively in Ignition’s designer.

As a first-class vector illustration interface, the Drawing Editor provides functionality like snapping, guides, fill & stroke, path, layering, and more. Also, rather than having to use external software, you can access a library of controls in Ignition that cover SVG’s wide range of capabilities to create vector graphics. And you can also make edits to your library of SVGs right in the designer, such as adding or removing elements, changing colors, or modifying stroke weights. Plus you can easily bring your graphics to life, with the ability to bind graphics to live data tags (or other dynamic sources).

With the abundance of functionality and customizability in the new Drawing Editor, it’s easier than ever to design bespoke HMIs and dashboards, and you’ll be fully equipped to take the user experience for your solutions to an entirely new level.

Form Builder

The ‘Frankenstein era’ of building forms by stitching together individual input components is over! Perspective has a new dynamic form builder in 8.3.0, providing a quick and convenient way to build attractive and responsive web forms that collect, validate, and submit data.

This new form builder expedites the process of building dynamic forms with a number of powerful features. It automatically adapts layouts for different screen sizes, has built-in and custom validation rules, offers flexible layouts, and provides dynamic visibility.

With a specialized Form Component canvas, you’ll be able to quickly add form data entry widgets such as text fields, checkboxes, dropdown selections, and more. Just configure sections, fields, conditional logic, and validation rules one time, and let the Form Component automatically create the form’s responsive layout, internal data logic, and client-side validation.

You’ll get a high degree of customizability with your forms, with full control over the layout of individual elements like columns, rows, and widgets, because they’re all Flex Containers. Plus, you can choose from seventeen different input types for a widget (such as single-line inputs, checkable inputs, and more). And you can define the submission process to suit your needs, so if you want to, for example, show a confirmation popup before submission, you’re covered.

Offline Mode

You can take Ignition even further — off the grid entirely, in fact — with Perspective’s new offline mode in 8.3.0. This game-changing feature, which is uncharted territory for a SCADA platform, lets you input project data when you’re offline, opening up a lot more new use cases for your solutions.

Offline mode is very handy for achieving continuous operations in remote environments with no Internet connection, or intermittent Internet connection, enabling you to avoid having to manually record information. With it you can enter and store data anywhere, at any time, and as soon as you reconnect, the system initiates automatic data synchronization.

Reimagined Gateway Web UI

The Gateway web user interface in 8.3.0 has been totally transformed with a full-scale makeover. In addition to its incredibly snazzy new appearance, the UI boasts an intuitive interface and a bevy of smart features, plus greater power and speed. We’ve been attentively listening to your feedback over the years, and put a lot of effort into tailoring the Gateway to speak directly to the Ignition community’s needs.

Thanks to a new deep link launching feature, you now have the ability to launch designers, Vision clients, and Perspective sessions right from the homepage with a single click. Additionally, configuration and diagnostic tools now live under the same roof, so you won’t waste time navigating between sections. One of our major goals when redesigning the UI was to make it “built for scale,” and as such 8.3’s Gateway has improved support for large numbers of connections. More improvements include the ability to quickly find what you need thanks to the addition of global search capabilities. Plus, you can easily connect or manage configuration through the web UI or externally with a RESTful Web API.

Overall, this optimization of Ignition’s Gateway web UI significantly reduces the amount of time it’ll take you to complete essential tasks and makes ongoing system management a whole lot easier.

Secrets Management

Security got a big boost in 8.3.0, and that’s in part thanks to the new Secrets Management — a cutting-edge way to keep private data safe.

The new secrets manager removes sensitive information like passwords, certificates, and encryption keys from Gateway configuration, storing them securely and protecting them from unauthorized parties.

And coming soon in 8.3, you’ll also be able to integrate with third-party secrets management platforms, such as HashiCorp Vault and various cloud secrets management services. So whether you want to manage secrets within Ignition or outside of it, you’ll be equipped to do so, and can have the peace of mind of knowing your information will be secure.

Enhanced Store-and-Forward Engine

Enjoy far fewer throughput issues, better diagnostic tools, as well as enhanced speed, visibility, and security with 8.3.0’s new, modern store-and-forward engine.

The new store-and-forward engine has better parallel data forwarding, intelligent table locking, and robust cache storage. Store-and-forward status pages will now show different types of processed data, which both provides better metrics for data throughput and helps when diagnosing issues that are specific to data type. And lastly, 8.3.0 improves the user experience by changing the quarantined data format to JSON instead of XML.

The improvements to store-and-forward will make it much easier for you to configure your system and less likely that you will experience throughput issues, which will help with data loss prevention. Plus, if you do experience an issue, you will have better diagnostic tools so you can get it resolved swiftly.

New RPC Technology With Protobuf

Security has also been boosted across Ignition in 8.3.0, due to switching Ignition’s Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) throughout to use Google’s Protobuf format preferentially instead of Java’s built-in serialization.

This update provides more secure communications between clients and Gateways, and makes these communications faster and lighter as well. Additionally, as a result of this update, you’ll save a significant amount of bandwidth for typical Gateway Network communications, with the volume of Gateway Network traffic being reduced by 75% on average.

Expanded Connectivity & Integrations

8.3.0 delivers a lot more options for native connection and integration, helping you achieve more unified communications.

You can connect to Kafka systems right from the Gateway with a new Kafka Cloud Connector Module, which integrates with Event Streams as both a source and handler for sending and receiving messages. You can also connect seamlessly to all your Siemens PLCs via a Siemens Enhanced Driver Module, which supports browsing, symbolic access, and direct I/O channel access without any manual reconfiguration.

Additionally, the Twilio Module now also includes Voice and WhatsApp notification profiles, enabling you to gain ISA 18.2-compliant alarm metrics, and send VoIP or text-to-speech notifications. Please note that this upgrade doesn’t replace Ignition’s Voice Notification Module — it’s just an alternative to it.

Simplified Containerization

In 8.3.0, it’s also easier for IT departments to deploy Ignition across an enterprise, thanks to a more streamlined containerization process. And you can now leverage the Ignition container image in even more ways.

8.3 has better compatibility with OpenShift, plus improved support for third-party modules and automated commissioning. Additionally, the introduction of our Ignition Helm Chart enables a more standardized and streamlined approach to Kubernetes deployments.

While you could already work with containers in 8.1, 8.3 is designed for that functionality first and foremost, making it the ideal platform for dynamic, next-gen containerized deployments.

Gateway Deployment Modes

Gateway Deployment Modes is another new feature in 8.3.0, enhancing the simplicity and safety of testing, updating, or modifying Ignition servers. With deployment modes you can create and manage configurations for multiple environments (such as development, staging, and production) all within a single server, which is a great help for streamlining your deployment workflow.

OPC UA

New OPC UA capabilities provide powerful ways to help you build more secure and more connected Industry 4.0 systems in 8.3.0.

A new feature, OPC UA Roles, gives you better control over tag access and permissions for devices, folders, and providers. With OPC UA Roles you can pick and choose which users have access to which specific tags.

And with the latest OPC UA 1.05 specification, you can allow third-party access to select specific devices, folders, or tag providers, and can control the read and write permissions granted with that access.

EAM Leased Licensing

In 8.3.0, Enterprise Administration Module (EAM) agents can now route leased license activation and periodic leased license renewals through an EAM Controller Gateway.

This means that EAM agents can remain safely isolated from the Internet, while still maintaining a secure connection to the controller. With this new functionality you get access to a whole new world of container deployments, which can be configured in advance to use a leased license as the container starts up.

Simplified Module Lifecycles

8.3.0 simplifies module lifecycles by removing hot module installations, removals, and restarts. Now, a module’s active/inactive state will only change on Gateway startup, and it will be determined by user configuration instead of the presence of .modl files. This is a helpful change that will reduce overall complexity and risk in your systems.

File-Based Storage

In 8.3.0 all configurations, tags, and most resources have been moved out of the SQLite internal database and into file-based storage.

This file-based structure is more stable, performant, and compatible with source-control systems. As a result of this update, you’ll now be able to track changes using a Version Control System (VCS) and make more granular changes to your configuration. And when you upgrade from an 8.1.x system to an 8.3.x system, the tag configuration will automatically migrate to the new storage system.

Additionally, this update is a big help for automated deployments. When you need to deploy and restore Ignition to a known configuration state, it’ll be a lot easier since the configuration will be represented by simple, human-readable text files.

Long-Term Support Release

The only thing that could make all the exciting new features we’ve explored today even better is the fact that 8.3 is a long-term support (LTS) release, so you can rest easy knowing you’ll get five years of ongoing updates and improvements to the platform.

Since 8.3 has such a solid foundation with its LTS status, you can build stable systems and be well prepared to adapt to whatever the future holds. And speaking of support, did you know that getting a support plan can be like your secret weapon? Support plans help you consistently maintain gold-standard systems and affordably stay on top of advancements in automation, thanks in part to the unlimited free platform and module upgrades included with any plan.

An Additional Way To Purchase Ignition

With the release of 8.3 there’s a new way to purchase Ignition (in addition to being able to buy modules à la carte), and that is via Ignition Solution Suites. Solution Suites are curated, prepackaged collections of modules and tools that enable you to achieve a specific common function (alarm management, for example). These suites are designed to help you streamline deployment, by dramatically reducing setup and configuration time.

8.3 Upgrade Guide

Now that you’re up to speed on all of 8.3.0’s biggest new features, you may be wondering how to upgrade to it. Well, we’ve designed the 8.3 upgrade process to be as seamless as possible, equipping you with clear and thorough guidance to make your upgrade journey smoother than ever before. Check out the Ignition 8.3 Upgrade Guide for details on how to upgrade to 8.3 from all versions of Ignition, along with a collection of upgrade resources to get all your questions answered.

Even More To Come!

Find out more about the new features in the 8.3.0 release notes and in the Ignition user manual. And as always, please stop in at the ideas portal if you have a request for anything that would help you design industrial automation solutions better, faster, or easier. Ignition’s momentous evolution into the industry-leading platform it is today with 8.3 wouldn’t have been possible without all the generous feedback you’ve offered over the years, so please keep the suggestions coming!

The 8.3.1 release train is already getting fueled up to deliver an abundance of updates that will further help you achieve next-level Digital Transformation with your Ignition solutions. Keep an eye out for its arrival in late October.