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Seeq Connectivity

Seeq is a process intelligence platform for industrial data analysis. It connects to external data and metadata sources through a layered model of datasources, agents, and connectors. Understanding this model helps clarify what EEI's VirtualForge connectors do and how they are deployed.

Key Terms

Seeq Server

The central Seeq application that stores time-series signals, assets, conditions, and metadata. Users interact with Seeq through a web browser connected to the Seeq Server. The server does not connect directly to external data sources — that is the role of connectors and agents.

Datasource

A datasource is a named connection registered in Seeq that represents an external system providing signals, assets, or metadata. Each datasource is backed by a connector that knows how to read from that source and create the corresponding items in Seeq.

Administrators manage them under Administration → Datasources — for example https://your.seeq.tech/administration/datasources. That page is where a datasource's connection status, its indexing activity, and the agent hosting it are visible, and it is the first place to look when a connector appears to have stopped.

Datasources may represent historians (OSIsoft PI, Honeywell Uniformance), databases, file stores, or purpose-built integrations such as VirtualForge connectors.

Remote Agent

A Seeq Remote Agent is a host process installed on separate infrastructure from the Seeq Server. It hosts and manages one or more connectors, handling connector lifecycle, scheduling, and communication with the Seeq Server over the network.

A single Remote Agent can host multiple connectors, and multiple Remote Agents can be registered with the same Seeq Server.

For practical purposes the agent is a language-neutral host: it loads the connectors it is given, and which runtime a connector was built against is a property of that connector, not of the agent hosting it. One agent can host connectors built in different languages side by side.

Connector

A Seeq Connector is an application deployed to a Remote Agent. It implements the Seeq Connector SDK interface along with the logic to read data or metadata from a specific external source, and to create or update items in Seeq — signals, assets, conditions, or scalar values.

Seeq supports two connector languages and treats them as interchangeable. The SDK is published for both Java and C# / .NET, on a shared version line, and a connector built on either is a first-class Seeq connector that an agent will load. This is the level at which the language question actually lands — it is a per-connector decision, usually driven by what client libraries the source system offers, rather than a platform-wide one.

Connectors run inside the Remote Agent process. They do not run on the Seeq Server itself.

Seeq Connector SDK

The Seeq Connector SDK — also referred to as the Seeq Link SDK — is the library Seeq provides that defines the standard interface for building a connector. It manages connector lifecycle (initialize, connect, index, disconnect) and provides the batch API used to create and update Seeq items.

Seeq publishes it in both supported languages, with a deliberately mirrored structure, so everything described on this page applies the same way whichever one a connector is built in. All Seeq connectors, including EEI's VirtualForge connectors, are built on it.

How They Relate

Seeq Server
    │
    │  (API / SDK)
    │
Remote Agent  ←── installed on separate infrastructure; hosts connectors of either language
    │
    ├── Connector A  ←── deployed as a plugin to the agent
    │       └── reads from External Source A (e.g., historian)
    │
    └── Connector B
            └── reads from External Source B (e.g., VirtualForge / ForgeVault)

The Remote Agent acts as a bridge. Connectors deployed to the agent retrieve data and metadata from their respective external sources, then use the Seeq Connector SDK to create and maintain items (signals, assets, formulas) in Seeq. The agent is indifferent to which language a connector was built in; that choice belongs to the connector.

EEI VirtualForge Connectors in This Model

EEI's VirtualForge connectors are standard Seeq connectors — they are deployed to a Seeq Remote Agent installed on customer infrastructure and registered with the customer's Seeq Server.

What they have in common is where the structure comes from: the asset hierarchy is driven by metadata, not assembled by hand in Seeq, and the system that owns a piece of content remains the system of record for it. Beyond that, they come in two shapes — and the two need different words.

Datasource and metadatasource

Datasource is Seeq's term, used as Seeq uses it. It refers to a connector that retrieves data from a source system and may, optionally, retrieve metadata from that same source alongside it. The defining characteristic is that the data comes from there.

Metadatasource is EEI's term. It is not Seeq vocabulary — we coined it because Seeq has no word for the thing, and we would rather name it than keep describing it. A metadatasource is a connector built explicitly to add metadata to data that already exists in Seeq. It contributes no data of its own, and the metadata it applies may be assembled from one upstream metadata system or from several at once.

Datasource (Seeq's term) Metadatasource (EEI's term)
Contributes Data, plus optionally metadata from that same source Metadata only
Acts on Content from its own source system Signals that already exist in Seeq, whichever datasource put them there
Upstream systems One source system One or several, feeding a single asset structure
EEI example ABB Knowledge Manager Metadata Connector

A note on the spelling, since it carries meaning: datasource and metadatasource as single words mean the thing registered in Seeq, while data source and metadata source as two words mean the upstream system out in your estate. Seeq already draws that line for datasource, and we follow it.

A datasource connector

A datasource connector reads directly from a system that owns time-series data — a historian such as ABB Knowledge Manager. It brings that system's tag catalog into Seeq as a browsable asset tree of signals, and serves sample data from the source on demand as users trend and analyze. The historian keeps its data; Seeq does not become a second copy of it. Where that same system also holds useful metadata, the connector brings it along.

A metadatasource connector

A metadatasource connector reads asset hierarchy metadata from one or more upstream metadata systems — ForgeVault, an existing Seeq server, or an SAP QM extract, for instance — and creates asset trees and formula items in Seeq that reference signals which already exist there. It organizes and enriches what is already in Seeq rather than introducing new data, and the signals it points at may have arrived through any Seeq datasource.

In both cases

  • No second copy of your data — signals are read on demand or referenced in place, never bulk copied into Seeq.
  • Hierarchy is driven by metadata, not by manual configuration, so structure stays consistent and reproducible.
  • Changes in the source are picked up on the next index cycle, without rebuilding by hand.

Where EEI adds to the baseline

Key Terms and How They Relate above are the Seeq connectivity model as Seeq defines it — the baseline any connector has to satisfy, whoever builds it. Getting data into Seeq correctly is the starting line, not the finish: keeping it current, organized, reliable, and supported is where most of the engineering actually lives.

That additional engineering is what we call Connectors ++, and because it lives in a shared foundation rather than being rebuilt per connector, every EEI connector inherits it.

Connected Intelligence starts with connection and is the foundation for new value.

What Connectors ++ adds →

A note on our relationship with Seeq

Endeavor Engineering is a Seeq partner. Seeq is a process-intelligence platform for industrial time-series analysis — Workbench, Organizer, Data Lab, Industrial Enterprise Monitoring, and Seeq AI. Our role is to extend it: connectors that bring your systems in, and tools that make the result easier to work with. Where a Seeq customer prefers it, EEI's connectors can be bought and supported through Seeq. See How We Engage.