Bridging Overview

Bridging is the data integration and workflow engine of GENESIS. It moves and transforms data between GENESIS components and heterogeneous external systems—databases, web services, message brokers, files, and virtually any real-time or historical manufacturing or business data source—by executing configurable workflows called transactions.

You configure Bridging in Workbench under the Bridging node, using a point-and-click interface that requires no code. A workflow is drawn as a diagram of activity blocks, so a task that would otherwise need a custom application—reading a dataset from a .json file and writing a value to an OPC UA tag, for example—can be as simple as connecting two blocks. Workflows range from straightforward IF/THEN logic to loops of conditional decisions, and you can extend the standard activity library with your own .NET activity blocks. Learn more

Bridging configuration in Workbench

A transaction is built from three configuration elements—the transaction, the template that holds its diagram, and the variables it uses—and every activity in the diagram hands its result to the next as a dataset. Learn more

The engine runs transactions concurrently on a thread pool, queues work that exceeds capacity, and can hibernate long-waiting transactions, so that their execution slots are released. Learn more

Key Capabilities

Bridging offers the following key features.

Feature	Description
Transactional Workflow Execution	Includes the following features: Custom control flow logic in a workflow diagram On Complete, On Success, On Fail, On True, or On False control flow branching Extensive library of stock activity blocks The capability to run a custom .NET code in a workflow as a Custom Activity block
Connectivity to Heterogeneous Data Sources	Provides the following actions: Reading real-time data from web services, message brokers, and OPC UA sources. Reading historical data from any historian or alarm logger. Reading datasets from databases, .xml, .csv, or .json source files. Writing data to web services, message brokers, and OPC UA sources. Writing data to databases, .xml, .csv, or .json destinations. Composing and sending email and text messages. Publishing information to Twilio, Vonage, or ATT cloud services.
Workflow Execution Triggering	Provides the following trigger types: Manual Periodic On data value change On Alarm On Database value change On File or Directory change On NT Event
Custom Script and Command Execution	Starts an external process or runs an operating system command line from within a workflow, and captures its standard output as a dataset. Learn more
Runtime Visibility	Records a transaction log for every execution, exposes live counters and per-transaction status as data points, and presents both to operators through the Bridging Navigator and Bridging Viewer controls. Learn more
Resilience and Scale	Recovers interrupted transactions after an unexpected shutdown, and distributes execution across a redundant network of load-balancing schedulers. Learn more

Using Bridging with GENESIS Data

Bridging consumes and produces data through the same point managers that serve the rest of GENESIS, so anything addressable as a GENESIS data point is available to a workflow. It reads and writes real-time and historical tags, reads and writes database data sources and manipulators, subscribes to the alarm server, calls web methods, publishes to MQTT brokers, generates reports, and sends notifications.

Transactions can be started by GENESIS triggers, alarm subscriptions, operator actions in a display, or on demand from Workbench. Learn more

For the comprehensive list of available Bridging activity blocks, refer to Bridging Activities List.