Best Practices

Use a Separate Tag Provider

Have your TamakiMES tag provide be raw tags, build your own UDTs with Alarming/History/whatever using reference tags pointing at the raw tags. This way you can change the raw tags without affecting the UDTs.

No Direct PLC Access

Per the purdue model and security best practices, do not allow direct access to the PLCs from the MES. Instead, use a gateway or middleware to access the PLCs. This way you can control access to the PLCs and have a single point of access for all PLCs.

Local Database

Keep a local database on the MES server for storing data that is not critical to the operation of the MES. This way you can keep the MES running even if the network goes down. Data in the local database can be synced to the main database when the network comes back up.

Inherit Tamaki MES Project

Tamaki MES is distributed with a Perspective project that is inheritable. Always do your work in a child project that sets TamakiMES as its parent: never edit the TamakiMES project itself. That way module upgrades (which re-import the TamakiMES project) leave your customizations untouched.

See Perspective Project Setup for the full walkthrough.