Asset hierarchy lost when replicating from Historian Tier 1 to Tier 2?

There is not currently a great solution for getting the namespace hierarchy from a "tier 1" to a "tier 2" for use with Historian Client Desktop (e.g. Trend and Query). 

You did mention the "Location" extended property does include the same information and that is automatically propagated to the "tier 2", but it is only really useful with the search functionality in Historian Client Web and there is not a way to visualize the hierarchy. 

As suggested by the customer, it would be possible to recreate the "Public Namespace" from the extended property using SQL (or an external program). If you make an attempt at that, a SQL "Common Table Expression" (CTE) might be helpful (this example creates a path from the namespace--you sort of need the reverse). Also plan some means to clean up "orphaned" namespace entries (e.g. after initially creating the hierarchy, area or object "Foo" is renamed as "Foobar" might otherwise leave "Foo" behind in the namespace).

Thanks for very fast response Elliot.

You are correct, that is the exact problem. To me it seems to be a UI issue in the desktop clients, and not with the historian server or replication itself. The information to build that tree structure is clearly available. Can this be expected to be available in near future releases or should we advise the customers to use the web client?

I guess it would make sense for local power users/admins would have the desktop client and have access to the tier 1. For the general office user the web client get data from Tier 2 might suffice. Not sure they will love the idea…

In your experience with the orphans, are they coming from the location extended property not being updated if you rename an object or is it coming from not monitoring the location for changes?

Thanks for very fast response Elliot.

You are correct, that is the exact problem. To me it seems to be a UI issue in the desktop clients, and not with the historian server or replication itself. The information to build that tree structure is clearly available. Can this be expected to be available in near future releases or should we advise the customers to use the web client?

I guess it would make sense for local power users/admins would have the desktop client and have access to the tier 1. For the general office user the web client get data from Tier 2 might suffice. Not sure they will love the idea…

In your experience with the orphans, are they coming from the location extended property not being updated if you rename an object or is it coming from not monitoring the location for changes?

On roadmap questions, I make a distinction between "ideas" (features we'd like to add) and "plans" (which have an assigned budget, schedule and staff). Using those definitions, we rarely have "plans" more than 3-4 months out (a consequence of our "agile" philosophy). In this specific case of replicating the hierarchy for Trend, there are no "plans". 

Though this isn't a "one size fits all" answer, I'd expect Historian Client Web to be a better fit for a lot of "tier 2" users. 

Finally, the comment about handling renamed objects/areas was meant as a design consideration, should you decide to implement a custom mechanism to populate the hierarchy. Those renames do come through to the "Location" just fine, but your implementation would need to consider that case so it doesn't leave behind the clutter of the old name in the hierarchy. The native "tier 1" namespace hierarchy has some problems with this case occassionally, too. 

Thanks for the clarifications. We will discuss this further before making any decisions.