Binding SQL Server Records to a WinCC Professional 15.1 Grid

Binding SQL Server Records to a WinCC Professional 15.1 Grid

WinCC Professional 15.1, the HMI engineering component of the TIA Portal V15.1 release, is intentionally not a general-purpose .NET host. Its screen editor exposes HMI-grade controls only, and a Windows Forms DataGrid or WPF DataGrid is not one of them. Engineers who need to display a SQL Server recordset on a runtime face a recurring set of symptoms: a third-party ActiveX grid vanishes or becomes uneditable after the first TIA Portal restart, a bound Recordset compiles without errors and renders nothing, or a VBScript routine that opens an ADODB recordset runs cleanly but the control refuses to consume the rows. This reference explains why those approaches fail, documents the two real options that exist in the Siemens product line for displaying tabular SQL data in a WinCC Professional runtime, and provides working connection strings, VBScript patterns, parameter tables, and a troubleshooting matrix that maps the most common symptoms to root cause and remediation.

1. Problem Definition: Why "Drop a DataGrid on the Screen" Does Not Work

Engineers typically arrive at this problem by translating a desktop .NET or VB6 pattern onto a WinCC screen. In a desktop application the workflow is:

1. Add a DataGrid or DataGridView to the form.
2. Open an ADODB.Connection in code.
3. Open an ADODB.Recordset against a SQL statement.
4. Assign the recordset to the grid's DataSource (or set DataSource = rs and DataMember accordingly).

Step 4 is the one that fails in WinCC Professional. The HMI screen is not a System.Windows.Forms.Form. The screen object model exposed to VBScript is a stripped-down HMI container that knows about HMI tags, language switches, screen windows, and the HMI-specific controls registered against the WinCC Runtime process. A System.Windows.Forms.DataGrid instantiated inside that container cannot subscribe to the WinCC HMI tag subsystem, and the screen's Properties dialog will not expose DataSource as a configurable property.

The behavior observed in the field falls into three buckets:

None of these are bugs in the sense of a Siemens defect: they are the result of treating the HMI screen editor as a desktop form designer. The fix is to use a control that Siemens has registered against the WinCC Runtime process.

2. The Two Real Options

Within the Siemens product line, two options exist for showing a row-and-column dataset on a WinCC Professional 15.1 screen:

The Table View is documented in the TIA Portal help at Table view (RT Professional). It is the right starting point for any project that has not yet committed to a third-party grid control.

3. Option A — Table View (RT Professional)

The Table View in WinCC RT Professional is a tabular display control purpose-built for showing process values or logged values in a table. It supports user-defined column order, column visibility, sorting, and column width. It is registered against the WinCC Runtime process and survives every TIA Portal restart by design.

3.1 What the Table View can show

• Live process values from one or more HMI tags (configured as a "process" column source).
• Archived values from a WinCC tag logging database (configured as a "logged" column source).
• Alarm log entries from the WinCC alarm subsystem (configured as an "alarm" column source).

3.2 What the Table View cannot show directly

There is no "SQL Query" column source. To populate a Table View with rows that originate from a SQL Server table outside the WinCC logging/alarm databases, you must either:

1. Mirror the SQL data into HMI tags at runtime (one tag per cell or one tag per row using arrays) and configure a "process" column source, or
2. Use a VBScript routine that writes the query result into the tag logging database and then read the table view from the logged source.

3.3 Wiring a SQL Query into a Process Column Source

This is the most common pattern in V15.1 projects. The pattern is:

1. Define an array tag MyGrid_Column1, MyGrid_Column2, ..., of type String or Real with an upper bound equal to the expected row count.
2. On a screen-open event, call a VBScript that opens an ADODB.Connection, runs SELECT col1, col2 FROM dbo.MyTable, and copies each Recordset row into the corresponding tag.
3. In the Table View, configure a process column for each array tag and bind the column width, header, and update rate.

Example VBScript pattern, suitable for a scheduled polling routine on a 500 ms tick:

' --- File: scripts\PollSQLGrid.vbs ---
Option Explicit

Dim conn, rs, sql, i, maxRows, sCol1, sCol2, sCol3
Const adOpenStatic = 3
Const adLockReadOnly = 1
Const adCmdText = 1

Set conn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open "Provider=MSOLEDBSQL;Data Source=SQLSRV01;Initial Catalog=PlantData;" & _
          "User ID=hmiread;Password=<config>;TrustServerCertificate=True;"

sql = "SELECT TOP 50 BatchID, Recipe, StartTime FROM dbo.BatchLog ORDER BY StartTime DESC"
Set rs = CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
rs.CursorLocation = 3      ' adUseClient
rs.Open sql, conn, adOpenStatic, adLockReadOnly, adCmdText

maxRows = 50
ReDim sCol1(maxRows - 1)
ReDim sCol2(maxRows - 1)
ReDim sCol3(maxRows - 1)

i = 0
Do While Not rs.EOF And i < maxRows
    sCol1(i) = CStr(rs("BatchID").Value)
    sCol2(i) = CStr(rs("Recipe").Value)
    sCol3(i) = CStr(FormatDateTime(rs("StartTime").Value, vbShortDate) & " " & _
                    FormatDateTime(rs("StartTime").Value, vbShortTime))
    i = i + 1
    rs.MoveNext
Loop

' Trim unused slots with empty strings to avoid stale values
Dim j
For j = i To maxRows - 1
    sCol1(j) = ""
    sCol2(j) = ""
    sCol3(j) = ""
Next

' Write back into the HMI tag array
SmartTags("MyGrid_Column1") = sCol1
SmartTags("MyGrid_Column2") = sCol2
SmartTags("MyGrid_Column3") = sCol3

rs.Close
Set rs = Nothing
conn.Close
Set conn = Nothing

3.4 Row count, sort order, and column visibility

WinCC Professional 15.1 Table View properties (sampled from the TIA Portal object properties dialog, "Table View" → "Columns" collection):

3.5 Hiding and showing columns at runtime

' Hide column 2 of TableView_1 at runtime
Dim tv
Set tv = Screen.Items("TableView_1")
tv.Columns(1).Visible = False

4. Option B — PM-GRID Control

The PM-GRID Control is the only grid control developed by Siemens for use inside a WinCC Professional (or WinCC V7.x) runtime. It is built and supported by the PM Options engineering team and is the answer that the WinCC product management gives when asked whether a DataGrid is on the roadmap. It is licensed separately and ships as a PM Options add-on. The control exposes a DataSource property that accepts a recordset-like provider, supports user-editable cells, master/detail layouts, and column reordering, and is registered against the WinCC Runtime process so it survives TIA Portal restarts without the uneditable-state regression seen with MSFlexGrid.

4.1 Where to get it

PM-GRID is delivered through PM Options, the same channel that provides PM-AGENT, PM-MES, and PM-ANALYZE. Contact your Siemens sales channel with the WinCC Professional 15.1 license number to obtain the PM Options installation media and a valid PM-GRID runtime license.

4.2 What it adds over the Table View

• Direct binding to an ADODB.Recordset opened in VBScript — no tag-array mirroring step.
• User-editable cells with field-level validation and event hooks (OnCellChanged, OnRowInsert, OnRowDelete).
• Native master/detail and grouping views.
• Configurable column types including checkboxes, drop-downs, and image columns.

4.3 When not to use it

PM-GRID is not free, and it is overkill for the common case of "show the last 50 alarm entries in a table." If the only requirement is to display already-logged data, the Table View is the right control. PM-GRID is justified when the screen must show free-form SQL data with editing and complex cell types.

5. Why MSFlexGrid, MSHFlexGrid, and VB6 DataGrid Fail

The MSFlexGrid (and its hierarchical sibling MSHFlexGrid) is a VB6-era ActiveX control that became uneditable after a TIA restart because the control's IUnknown registration in the Windows registry is invalidated when TIA Portal rebuilds the HMI container. Specifically, the symptoms are:

VB6 DataGrid (the one found in the "Microsoft Data Grid Control 6.0" component) has the same bitness issue. Both controls also lack a DataSource that WinCC can populate: they expect a desktop-Data binding chain (DataEnvironment + Command + Recordset) that is not present in the WinCC HMI container.

6. SQL Server Data Access in WinCC Professional VBScript

WinCC Professional 15.1 VBScript supports ADODB.Connection and ADODB.Recordset from the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) stack. There is no System.Data in scope, so the VBScript patterns are the late-1990s ADO patterns, not the .NET SqlDataAdapter patterns. Three things matter for a working connection:

1. Provider on the WinCC Runtime PC must match a provider installed on that PC.
2. Credentials should not be hard-coded; use the WinCC User Administration or a Windows service account that the runtime runs as.
3. Connection lifetime: open late, close early. WinCC Runtime does not pool ADODB connections.

6.1 OLE DB Providers Available on a Default WinCC Professional 15.1 PC

6.2 Connection String Reference

6.3 Stored Procedure vs Ad-Hoc Query

Prefer stored procedures over inline SELECT statements. The reasons are operational, not stylistic:

• Stored procedures give the SQL Server DBA a single place to audit access paths to plant data.
• They survive schema renames when the procedure signature stays stable.
• They are easier to lock down with GRANT EXECUTE than table-level GRANT SELECT.

Calling a stored procedure with one input and one result set:

Set cmd = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
cmd.ActiveConnection = conn
cmd.CommandType = 4                       ' adCmdStoredProc
cmd.CommandText = "dbo.usp_GetBatchLog"
cmd.Parameters.Append cmd.CreateParameter("@TopN", 3, 1, 0, 50)  ' adInteger, adParamInput
Set rs = cmd.Execute

7. Building the Table View That Is Bound to SQL Data

Walk-through for a working screen on WinCC Professional 15.1 with TIA Portal V15.1 Update 6 or later.

7.1 Prerequisites

• TIA Portal V15.1 installed with the WinCC Professional option.
• Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server 18.x installed on the engineering PC and on every runtime PC.
• A SQL Server login with GRANT EXECUTE on the target stored procedures, or GRANT SELECT on the target tables.
• Defined HMI tag arrays sized to the expected row count. As a rule of thumb, do not exceed 200 rows in a single Table View; WinCC's tag subsystem payload scales linearly.

7.2 Step-by-step

1. Open the TIA Portal project, switch to the HMI device, and create three internal tags MyGrid_Column1, MyGrid_Column2, MyGrid_Column3 of type WString[50]. The [50] array bound defines the maximum row count of the grid.
2. Open the target screen and insert a Table View control from the toolbox ("Controls" → "Table View").
3. Resize the table view to span the screen. In the properties dialog, set RowCount to 50 and ColumnCount to 3.
4. For each column, set DataSource to the corresponding tag array. Set the column Header to the human-readable label.
5. Set the table view's UpdateRate to 1000 ms (1 s) for a normal polling workload. Lower this to 500 ms only if the underlying query completes in < 200 ms.
6. On the screen's Open event, call PollSQLGrid (the VBScript in section 3.3).
7. Add a button "Refresh" whose click event calls PollSQLGrid.
8. Compile the project and download to the runtime PC.
9. Open WinCC Runtime and verify the table populates within one update cycle.

7.3 Verification checklist

8. Polling, Performance, and Tag Limits

The Table View is a polling consumer. The runtime reads each cell's DataSource at UpdateRate, and the cumulative poll cost grows with column count × row count. Practical limits observed in V15.1 deployments:

8.1 Staggered poll to avoid synchronized CPU load

' On screen-open, schedule the poll on a randomized offset
Randomize
HMIRuntime.Trace "Poll starting in " & Int(Rnd() * 1000) & " ms"
HMIRuntime.SetTimeout Int(Rnd() * 1000), "PollSQLGrid"

9. Version Compatibility Notes (V15.1 → V20)

10. Troubleshooting Matrix

11. Field-Proven Patterns

11.1 Guarding against null in numeric columns

Function SafeReal(v)
    If IsNull(v) Then
        SafeReal = 0
    ElseIf IsEmpty(v) Then
        SafeReal = 0
    ElseIf VarType(v) = vbString And Len(v) = 0 Then
        SafeReal = 0
    Else
        SafeReal = CDbl(v)
    End If
End Function

11.2 Closing the connection even on error

On Error Resume Next
rs.Close
Set rs = Nothing
conn.Close
Set conn = Nothing
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
    HMIRuntime.Trace "Cleanup error: " & Err.Number & " " & Err.Description
    Err.Clear
End If
On Error Goto 0

11.3 Using a tag logging database as the buffer

For data that updates more frequently than 1 s, write the SQL result into a configured tag logging database (WinCC "Tag Logging" → "Process Tag" configuration) and bind the Table View to the logged source. This decouples the SQL poll from the screen update rate and lets the table view consume batched data via WinCC's read-optimized path. The write-side VBScript uses the WinCC logging API:

' Write a single row to a configured logging tag
Dim logTag
Set logTag = HMIRuntime.Logging("MyLoggingTag")
logTag.LogValue CLng(Now), SafeReal(rs("Temperature").Value), 0 ' quality = good

12. Summary and Decision Path

For a project on WinCC Professional 15.1 that needs to show SQL Server data in a grid, the decision is short:

1. If the grid shows already-logged data or a static snapshot, use the Table View (RT Professional). It is free, documented, and supported. Mirror the SQL data into HMI tag arrays on a 500–2000 ms poll. See the Table view (RT Professional) reference for the current property set.
2. If the grid needs free-form SQL Server data, user-editable cells, or complex cell types, license the PM-GRID Control from PM Options. It is the only grid control Siemens has built for the WinCC Runtime host.
3. Do not use MSFlexGrid, MSHFlexGrid, or VB6 DataGrid. They are not supported in a 64-bit WinCC Runtime and will not survive a TIA Portal restart.