Format of .DBF trend files

The following is an example of the format of RSLogix Emulate-compatible .DBF files, as shown in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The first record in the file is the time the record was logged and the symbol names/addresses logged (RSTrend saves the symbol name, if one is available).

The trend player expects this format. You can have any number of addresses in the .DBF file, but they need to be arranged in the manner shown above.

Where are the addresses?

Note that the .DBF file does not necessarily contain address information. For the trend player to work, the address information must either be in the .DBF file, or addresses must be assigned to the .DBF file in the trend player.

If you are using RSTrend and logging data from addresses, the address record in the .DBF file contains "symbolic versions" of the address. The trend player in RSLogix Emulate interprets this address information as addresses.

If you are using RSTrend and logging data from symbols (or any other method other than from addresses), the addresses record differently in the resulting .DBF file. The example shown above is from RSTrend logging data from symbols. If this is the case, you will need to assign addresses to the .DBF file records.

Note The trend player is designed to work primarily with RSTrend, and therefore the trend player expects to see DBF files in the same format as the files generated by RSTrend. This means that if you want to include the address information in the DBF file (and avoid having to tell the trend player which addresses go with which records), the address information contained in the DBF file must be in the format described in the table below.

Address Type	Format	Example
Word address	nx_w (where n is the file radix, x is the file number, and w is the word number)	N57:0 becomes N57_0
Word address with mnemonic	nx_w_m (where n is the file radix, x is the file number, w is the word number, and m is the mnemonic)	T4:0.ACC becomes T4_0_ACC