Reference · for Operators, Engineers, Administrators, Developers
Glossary
The words the Proxus hub uses for its building blocks, screens and states, each explained in one or two plain sentences.
Terms are listed in alphabetical order and written the way the hub writes them.
A
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active (pipeline) | A pipeline published so that its effects really happen: alarms open, messages are sent, devices are written. Compare Shadow. |
| Address (tag) | Where a value is in the machine: a register number, a PLC tag name, an OPC UA node. The form depends on the protocol. |
| Alert | A record that a rule or pipeline found a condition, such as a value over a limit. It has a severity and a status: New, Acknowledged, Resolved or Ignored. Alerts are listed in Alerts. |
| Application Templates | Packages of devices, profiles, pipelines and dashboards that set up a ready-made solution. See App templates. |
| Area | The third level of the plant hierarchy, below Site: a hall, a department, a utility. |
B
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bad (quality) | A value that cannot be trusted: the read failed or the device reported it as wrong. Shown in red; a rule or pipeline can leave it out. |
| Browse | Asking a device for the list of values it offers, so you can pick tags instead of typing addresses. Available for OPC UA, SNMP, MTConnect and Allen Bradley. |
C
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Certificate pinning (install command) | The edge install command accepts only the hub that holds a known HTTPS key (--pinnedpubkey), so the installer cannot be swapped on the way. If the hub's HTTPS certificate changes, create a new command. See Install a gateway. |
| Certificate Store | The place in the hub (Security > Certificate Store) where every certificate is kept: for HTTPS, the message server, the gateways, OPC UA and outbound targets. It is also the platform's certificate authority. See Certificates. |
| Connection test | A check, run from the gateway, that the gateway can reach a device and open a protocol session with it. |
D
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Data type | The kind of value a tag holds: Bool, Short, UShort, Int, UInt, Float, Long, ULong, Double, String, Bytes, DateTime. |
| Device | One machine, PLC, robot or sensor that Proxus reads. It belongs to one edge gateway and uses one device profile. |
| Device Profile | How to talk to a kind of device: the protocol, connection settings and the list of tags. Many devices can share one profile. |
| Device type | What a device is (PLC, CNC machine, filler and so on). You choose it; it sets the icon and how the Operations Center shows the device. |
| Discovery (server discovery) | Searching the network for OPC UA servers or MTConnect agents. |
E
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Edge gateway | The Proxus software that runs near the machines, on a computer you choose (an industrial PC, a server or a virtual machine; x86 or ARM, Linux). It is not a hardware box. It reads the machines, runs functions and pipelines, keeps the data while the hub cannot be reached and forwards it. The hub runs one itself, called SYSTEM. |
| Effect | Something a pipeline does outside itself: opening an alarm, sending a notification, writing to a device, calling an API. |
| Enterprise | The top level of the plant hierarchy: the company. |
| Equipment (equipment module) | The fifth level of the plant hierarchy, below Line / cell: one machine or unit. |
F
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Function | C# code that runs on edge gateways and works on live data. See Functions SDK. |
G
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Good (quality) | A value read without error, which can be trusted. |
H
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Historian | The Proxus store of all tag values over time, used by trends, reports and the Telemetry API. |
| Hub | The central Proxus server: the screens, the configuration, the historian and the APIs. |
L
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Line / cell (process cell) | The fourth level of the plant hierarchy, below Area: a production line or cell. |
M
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MasterToken | The secret user name that MQTT clients use to read the UNS topics on a gateway's broker. |
N
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Notification channel | A way Proxus sends messages to people: email, SMS, Teams, Slack and others. See Notification channels. |
O
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On Change | Sending only the values that changed since the last reading. Compare Pass Through. |
| Operational Graph | A map of how devices, profiles, gateways, pipelines, rules, targets and dashboards depend on each other. |
| Operations Center | The screen that shows the state of the plant's devices at a glance. |
| Outbound target | A system outside Proxus that receives device values: a database, a message broker, a cloud service, a REST API. See Outbound targets. |
P
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pass Through | Sending every reading with all its values. Compare On Change. |
| Pipeline | A chain of nodes that changes data before it is stored (Transport Pipeline) or reacts to stored data (Automation). See Pipeline nodes. |
| Pipelines Only | A target that receives data only from pipelines that name it, not from normal device delivery. |
| Platform CA (Proxus Platform CA) | The certificate authority the hub creates on its first start. It issues the certificates of the hub's HTTPS (on new installations), its message server and every gateway. Install it as trusted on browsers and devices with Download CA, or replace it with your own through Use Corporate CA. |
Q
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quality | How far a value can be trusted: Good, Bad or Uncertain. |
| Quarantine | Data that a pipeline set aside for inspection instead of storing it normally. |
R
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Read every | How often all tags of a device are read. |
| Rule | A condition on live values (for example "temperature above 80") with actions that run when it is met. See Rules. |
S
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Shadow (pipeline) | A pipeline published to run on real data without effects: what it would do is recorded in Trace, nothing is sent or written. |
| Site | The second level of the plant hierarchy, below Enterprise: a plant or location. |
| Sleep mode | The state of a device that stopped answering. The gateway tries again at growing intervals instead of every read cycle. |
| Sparkplug B | An MQTT standard for industrial data. Proxus can publish the UNS in this format and send to Sparkplug B brokers. |
| SYSTEM | The edge gateway that runs inside the hub. It reads machines on the hub's own network. |
| SYSTEM INTERNAL DB | The outbound target that stands for the Proxus historian itself. |
T
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tag | One value read from a device: a speed, a temperature, a counter, a state. |
| Token (device) | A secret code of each device, used when the device sends its own values over MQTT or HTTP. |
| Trace | The tab of a pipeline that shows samples of data passing through it and what it did or would do. |
| Transport strategy | How a target receives values: Pass Through, On Change or Pipelines Only. |
| Trend Workspace | The screen for plotting tag values over time and comparing them. |
| Trusted Server Certificate | The CA or server certificate from the Certificate Store that an outbound target or an OPC UA device profile uses to check the server it connects to. |
U
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Uncertain (quality) | A value that was read but may be wrong, for example one the device marked as estimated or stale. |
| Unified Namespace (UNS) | One tree of all plant data, ordered enterprise, site, area, line, equipment, device, tag. Proxus publishes it on MQTT and shows it in the UNS Explorer. See Unified Namespace. |
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