WinCC OA supports two panel formats, what are differences?

Mimics, faceplates, screens, symbols are stored in WinCC OA-so-called "panels". These panels are stored in files. WinCC OA supports two different file formats for these panel files. A proprietary *.pnl format and a XML based format.

• Grafical editor (GEDI) is able to read/write both formats.
• Runtime userinterface (UI, WebUI) can display both formats.
• Pocketclient can display both formats

Recommendation:

• If only standard WinCC OA tools (grafical editor) are used to generate panels, *.pnl format should be used.
• If you want to generate (more or less automatically) WinCC OA panels with external tools, XML format should be preferred, since it is not complicated for a SW programmer to generate the WinCC OA XML format.

Tipps:

• There is a config parameter (defaultPanelFormat) to select which format is the standard panel format in a project.
• If you use a panel-file name without extension in ctrl, ctrl will first try to open a *.pnl file and is then looking for an *.xml file.
• If you want to use *.xml file format, be aware that ctrl libraries you are using have not hardcoded "*.pnl" extensions in there program code.
• Because of the more complex XML syntax, *.pnl files open faster in UI.
• *.xml files need to be well formated, this can be validated by several tools available on the web.
• No documentation for *.pnl format is provided, whereas XML panel file format is well documented in the online help.

Restrictions:

• The standard panel format in WinCC OA is *.pnl. Be aware that there are some restrictions in the XML format, which can be found in the WinCC OA documentation: E.g. bartrend-widget is not supported in xml-format.
• The panel file format is an internal format. ETM may change its syntax without further notice in future releases. Each panel has a version number to identify different panelfile format versions.