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    Event Engine® · Factory Data Systems

    The middleware that keeps up with your plant.

    Native drivers straight from your PLCs to your databases — no OPC server needed, no ODBC layer, no custom glue code, and OPC UA on hand for the controllers that want it. Configuration scales with the number of structures, not the number of tags, and every event is acknowledged back to the controller in real time.

    Download the 30-day trial Event Engine® Overview (PDF)

    Fully functional · 30 days · no credit card · no sales call — Requires Windows, SQL Server or Oracle, and a PLC or OPC server

    What's in the box

    Native PLC driversDirect Rockwell Logix, Siemens S7 and Modbus TCP/IP comms, with OPC UA for everything else.
    Native database driversBuilt-in SQL Server and Oracle. No ODBC layer to install, tune, or maintain.
    Structure importUDTs, data blocks, and PLC data types imported whole. One definition, not a thousand tags.
    Warm connectionsDatabase connections held ready, so a burst runs at the speed of the database, not of a login.
    Real-time acknowledgementEvery event returns completed or failed to the controller, with a status code and timestamp.
    Multiple result setsOne event returns many variable-length result sets to many destinations.
    Structured write-backA result set lands in a matching PLC structure — a whole recipe, not a list of scalars.
    Label and message eventsZPL label printing and SMTP email are event types in their own right, not add-on modules.
    Per-event diagnosticsWhat was attempted, what the controller returned, what the database returned, where it stopped.
    Event HealthLearns each event's normal, then warns when timeout headroom shrinks or latency drifts.
    Configured, not codedEvents are built, monitored and maintained in a browser. No programming, with per-user access control.
    Online changesAdd and edit events live, without restarting services or disturbing the rest of the operations.

    Integration projects fail the same way every time

    Engineers spend weeks configuring individual tags. Under load the system slows without erroring. And whoever investigates it afterward is reconstructing a shift they were not there for.

    Those last two are the same failure, not two. Slow is not an error. A transaction that used to complete in 40 milliseconds and now takes 900 still succeeds, so nothing raises an alarm, nothing goes on the error list, and nothing anywhere writes down that it got worse. The degradation is real and completely unrecorded — right up to the shift busy enough to push it past a timeout and stop the line.

    By the time anyone is asked to explain it, the evidence is gone. The load that caused it has passed, the shift that saw it has ended, and the person holding the problem is reading logs that recorded only that things finished. Reproducing the conditions is guesswork, and it is guesswork done under pressure, on a line that is down.

    And when the process changes, updating the middleware becomes a project of its own — a tag-by-tag audit across every controller, done under time pressure, by the people who were supposed to be doing controls work.

    Event Engine® was built to remove all four of those failure modes rather than manage around them.

    One hop between your PLCs and your data. Not four.

    OPC and ODBC each add a server to run, a configuration to maintain, and the latency of another handshake — plus the lowest-common-denominator limits of a consensus protocol. Event Engine® drives both ends natively, which is where its speed advantage over an OPC stack comes from.

    Where a native driver doesn't exist, OPC UA does. A controller outside the Logix, S7 and Modbus families is still a first-class citizen: point Event Engine® at your OPC UA server and everything above this line works unchanged — the same events, the same structures, the same diagnostics. Native by default, OPC UA by exception, and never a mixed plant you have to solve twice.

    Getting started

    Four steps to your first event

    No desktop client. No VPN session. No PLC download.

    1 — Import the structure

    Point Event Engine® at your PLC and import its structure definitions — UDTs, data blocks, PLC data types — straight from the controller.

    2 — Bind the tags you need

    Browse the PLC or enter names directly. A 100-element array of a 10-member structure is one definition, not a thousand entries.

    3 — Map the event

    Point it at your database stored procedure or table. Native drivers call the procedure directly, with no ODBC in the path.

    4 — Trigger it and watch

    Fire the event and see the result land, with timing and status on the same screen.

    Configuration changes are made live, without disturbing the rest of the operations.

    The Event Engine browser interface showing event configuration and live status.
    Configuration, monitoring, and diagnostics in the browser — nothing to install on an engineering workstation.

    Where to go next

    Two jobs, two sets of questions

    The same engine, read from two ends. Everything below this point on this page is common ground — these two pages answer what is specific to you.

    You build systems for other people Integration in days, not weeks Configuration effort, structure import, recipe write-back, label and email events, and what it costs to quote a job. For systems integrators → You run the plant The one that tells you before it breaks Configured, not coded. Per-event diagnostics, self-monitoring, and what happens when the database goes away. For plant operations →

    Proof

    An hour of lost production a day, recovered

    An automotive components manufacturer averaged five events per second — but the process swung between none and thirty-five concurrent.

    The peaks were enough to fault events with no assignable cause: dropped records, scrapped parts, missed cycles, and an hour of lost production every day. Months of troubleshooting found nothing, because nothing had recorded anything to find. Event Engine® absorbed the bursts, and let them consolidate several middleware instances onto one.

    Before
    Faulted events with no assignable cause; roughly one hour of lost production per day.
    After
    Bursts handled without fault; multiple middleware instances consolidated onto one.
    Load
    5 events per second average, swinging between 0 and 35 concurrent.

    The full account, and how the bursts were absorbed →

    Put a stopwatch on it

    Every middleware vendor says they're fast — fast to build, fast when running. Download the trial and measure it against what you're running now.

    Download the 30-day trial Talk to an engineer

    Category

    What you stop running

    The usual plant-floor integration stack is four hops: PLC, OPC server, middleware, ODBC, database. Event Engine® is one.

    Event Engine® compared with an OPC and ODBC middleware stack
      OPC + ODBC stack Buffering middleware Event Engine®
    Servers between PLC and database OPC server, middleware, ODBC layer Middleware plus a queue store None — native drivers both ends
    Configuration unit Individual tags Individual tags Whole PLC structures (UDTs, DBs)
    Behaviour under a burst Reconnection cost stacks up; events fault Absorbed into a queue Warm connections; runs at database speed
    Does the PLC learn the outcome? Rarely Told it was queued, not that it landed Completed or failed, with status and timestamp
    A transaction that is getting slower Succeeds silently until it times out Succeeds silently until it times out Flagged against its own baseline, weeks early
    When something breaks Logs across three products Outage window, not a containment Per-event trace: attempted, returned, stopped
    Changing a structure Tag-by-tag audit Tag-by-tag audit Re-import once, all instances covered

    Compatibility

    Works with what you already run

    Controllers
    Direct drivers for Rockwell Logix, Siemens S7, and Modbus TCP/IP. Any PLC reachable over OPC UA.
    Databases
    Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, driven natively.
    Destinations
    Databases, PLC data structures, label printers, and SMTP email.
    Triggers
    A PLC tag, a schedule, or an inbound REST call into Event Engine®.
    Platform
    Windows — on-premises or in the cloud. No vendor cloud service required.
    Interface
    Any browser on the plant network, with per-user access control.
    Licensing
    Perpetual or subscription, with an annual maintenance agreement available.

    The stack

    Event Engine® and IntelliTrack™

    Event Engine® moves plant-floor data reliably. IntelliTrack™ turns it into a manufacturing record.

    Measurements, process actuals, and recipe values captured per unit and per operation, tied to genealogy, quality, and OEE — available to production, engineering, and quality while the shift is still running. If you are connecting PLCs today because someone will ask a hard question tomorrow, the two are designed to work as one stack.

    Each also stands alone. Event Engine® feeds any historian, MES, or database you already run, and IntelliTrack™ accepts data from the systems you already have.

    Learn about IntelliTrack™ →

    Downloads

    Everything you need to evaluate it

    Installer, documentation and the commercial terms — all of it, without a form.

    Requires Windows, SQL Server or Oracle, and a PLC or OPC server.

    Systems integrators What it costs you to build Structure import, recipe write-back, label and email events, licensing by event. Read the integrator page → Plant operations What it costs you to keep No code to maintain, per-event diagnostics, and a warning before the stoppage. Read the operations page →

    Measure it against what you're running now

    Every middleware vendor says they're fast. The difference is that this one is thirty days away from being a number you measured yourself, on your own controllers, against your own database, under your own bursts.

    Fully functional. No credit card. No sales call unless you want one.

    Download the 30-day trial Talk to an engineer

    Questions about licensing? Activate or manage a license →
    Event Engine® is developed by Factory Data Systems — a team with deep experience in manufacturing execution, plant-floor integration, and industrial data systems.