Design and Govern a UNS with Namespaces

Namespaces is a configuration construct for defining hierarchical structures and organizing datasets within it. Namespaces consists of nodes that can be created, named, and organized into a logical hierarchy. These nodes can represent the organization of a business and its access patterns for data, potentially resembling the asset hierarchy as prescribed by ISA-95 Part 2. Each node within the namespace hierarchy can reference a connection input or an instance of a model. These associations allow users to define the hierarchal relationships between datasets. Use the intuitive, graphical node-tree to create nodes and organize their hierarchy or import the namespace definition from external sources using CSV or JSON formats.

Current day UNS projects lack a centralized place to manage the design of the UNS. Namespaces allow users to construct and maintain the structure of their UNS inside of the Intelligence Hub to then expose it to other systems, including MQTT brokers and data warehouses, as needed. This encourages a better approach to standardizing the structure of the UNS. 

Namespaces are best adopted after datasets for assets or use cases have been modeled. Once this is established, you can leverage the organization and modeled data to simplify data flows. For example, you could first publish all real-time data flows to MQTT and use the Namespace hierarchy as topics. Then, you could query certain asset types (e.g., boilers) with specific process conditions (e.g., temperature exceeding 300°C) to route as messages to Azure Event Hubs to facilitate stream analytics and alarm workflows.

As a new stage within Pipelines, Smart Query plays an important role for Namespaces by allowing Intelligence Hub users to run a simple query for the exact data they need. Smart Query provides a way to intelligently read and filter data from the Intelligence Hub’s internal data objects including Inputs, Instances, and Namespaces. It can query Namespaces to support multiple access patterns—by asset hierarchy, asset type, model type, and more. This dramatically simplifies Pipeline processing. With Smart Query, users can reduce the need to manipulate data structures with scripting and elegantly consume the namespace in the way they need it for a given use case or destination system. Together, Namespaces and Smart Query make the UNS easier to create, easier to maintain, and make its data easier to access and use.