WeEngineerBetter Ignition gateway analysis

Services

A deliberately narrow service, priced per item.

Ignition gateway analysis is the service. Rockwell PLC code and MySQL / Microsoft SQL databases are add-ons that make it more useful. Everything is remote and everything is quoted before you pay.

Verified by an Ignition Gold Certified engineer

PRIMARY SERVICE

Ignition Gateway Analysis

$1,000standard · flat

You send an existing gateway backup (.gwbk). We restore it in an isolated environment and document what is actually there — not what the last drawing claims. Ignition 7.9 through current. New to the platform? Inductive Automation publishes the product documentation.

Configuration and structure

  • Projects, inheritance, and what is orphaned or unused
  • Tag providers, tag counts, UDT structure, and naming drift
  • Device connections, OPC servers, and dead or duplicated endpoints
  • Database connections, named queries, and store-and-forward configuration
  • Redundancy, installed modules, and version and licensing posture

Behavior and risk

  • Gateway scripts, tag event scripts, and timer scripts — and what they touch
  • Alarm pipelines, notification profiles, and alarms nobody will ever act on
  • Bindings and expressions that will not survive a version upgrade
  • Security: user sources, roles, and permissions wider than they need to be
  • Performance patterns — scan classes, query load, tag group design

Standard

$1,000

Your gateway runs stock Inductive Automation modules only — Perspective, Vision, SQL Bridge, OPC-UA, Reporting, Alarm Notification, and the rest of the first-party set.

Advanced

$2,000

Your gateway runs Sepasoft, Cirrus Link, or custom / third-party modules. These take materially longer to work through, and obtaining a usable copy of the module to restore the gateway is itself part of the job.

Why third-party modules cost more — and how we know before you pay

A gateway backup only restores as far as the modules we have. If your system runs Sepasoft MES or Cirrus Link MQTT and we do not have that module, the resources belonging to it will not load in our environment. We would be quietly skipping part of your system without either of us knowing.

So we do not guess. During scoping we read the installed-module list straight out of your backup header and tell you which tier applies before any money changes hands. You will never be moved to the higher tier mid-engagement, and if we cannot obtain a module at all we say so up front and document that portion as unverified rather than pretending otherwise.

What you send

One gateway backup file (.gwbk), sanitized. If taking a backup is not something you have done before, we will walk you through it on Teams or Google Meet at no charge.

ADD-ON

Rockwell PLC Program Analysis

$1,000per PLC

Send exported program files. We document the control side — and, more usefully, every place it disagrees with what Ignition believes is true. Priced per PLC, flat, so you pay for the ones you actually want looked at and nothing else.

The program itself

  • Program and routine inventory, including routines never called
  • Tag and data-type structure, and where naming diverges from the SCADA layer
  • Unscanned, disabled, or forced logic still sitting in the program
  • Comment and documentation coverage — the parts a new hire cannot read

The seam between PLC and SCADA

  • Addressing and mapping mismatches between the PLC and the gateway
  • Tags the HMI reads that the program no longer writes
  • Alarm and fault handling: whether the two layers agree
  • Logic duplicated in both places, which is where surprises come from

Rockwell Automation platforms only

ControlLogix, CompactLogix, GuardLogix, MicroLogix, SLC 500, and PLC-5.

We do not analyze Siemens, Beckhoff, Mitsubishi, Omron, or other platforms. Not because they are not worth analyzing, but because we have not spent years in them and you should not pay someone to learn on your system. If that is what you need, we will say so in the first reply rather than take the work.

What you send — file format matters

  • Preferred: .L5K — plain-text export containing everything we need.
  • Also accepted: .L5X — same price, same turnaround.
  • We do not accept .ACD files. An ACD is a closed project file that has to be opened in licensed software before anything can be read from it. Exporting an L5K from Studio 5000 takes about two minutes per PLC — ask and we will show you how, on a call, free.
ADD-ON

Database Analysis

$1,000per connection

Most plant databases were built by controls engineers, not DBAs. They work — right up until the table hits ten million rows, or two records disagree and nobody can say which one is right. Priced per database connection, flat, because that is the unit your gateway actually uses.

Integrity and structure

  • Tables with no primary key, and what that has already allowed in
  • Missing foreign keys and orphaned rows nothing points at
  • Duplicate records that should have been impossible
  • Data types chosen by habit — text columns holding numbers, dates stored as strings
  • Nullable columns that should never have been nullable

Performance and growth

  • Missing indexes on the columns Ignition actually filters and joins on
  • Redundant and unused indexes slowing down every write
  • Named queries and transaction groups doing full table scans
  • Table growth rates, and which one runs you out of disk first
  • Retention, archiving, and whether a backup would actually restore

MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server only

Including MariaDB. We do not analyze PostgreSQL, Oracle, or other engines — the same reason as the PLC scope. These two cover the overwhelming majority of Ignition installations and they are the two we know cold.

Each finding comes with the corrective statement to run — the index to add, the constraint to apply, the column type to change — along with what it will lock, roughly how long it takes, and what to verify afterward.

What you send

A schema export or sanitized structure dump per connection. We do not need your production data; row counts and index statistics are enough.

CONSULTATION

Ignition License Selection

$125one hour

One hour, remote, to work out which Inductive Automation license actually fits what you are building — before you commit budget to the wrong one.

  • Which edition and which modules your use case genuinely requires
  • Where unlimited licensing pays off and where it does not
  • Perspective versus Vision for what you are actually building
  • What redundancy and Edge licensing would cost you
  • Which modules you are being sold that you will not use
  • How the pricing behaves as you add tags, clients, and sites
  • An honest read on whether Ignition is the right platform at all
  • Written summary afterward, so you can forward it to whoever approves it

No analysis engagement required and no obligation afterward. We do not resell Ignition licenses and earn nothing from what you choose — buy from Inductive Automation or an integrator, whichever suits you. Our only interest is that you do not overbuy.

Scope

What we cover, and what we don't

Written out so you can decide in thirty seconds whether to keep reading.

In scope

  • Ignition gateway backups, 7.9 through current
  • Stock Inductive Automation modules — standard tier
  • Sepasoft, Cirrus Link, and custom modules — advanced tier
  • Rockwell PLCs: ControlLogix, CompactLogix, GuardLogix, MicroLogix, SLC 500, PLC-5
  • MySQL, MariaDB, and Microsoft SQL Server
  • License selection consulting

Not in scope

  • Siemens, Beckhoff, Mitsubishi, Omron, and other non-Rockwell PLCs
  • PostgreSQL, Oracle, and other database engines
  • Non-Ignition SCADA and HMI platforms
  • Live system access — we work from backups and exports only
  • Performing the remediation work itself
  • Safety certification, regulatory audit, or network penetration testing

Exclusions and re-quoting. Flat prices assume a system of ordinary size. Some exclusions apply, and we tell you about them before you pay, never after:

  • A database connection with more than 100 tables is re-quoted before work starts.
  • A gateway substantially larger than the included 8-hour block is re-quoted before work starts.
  • Additional hours are only ever billed with your written approval, given in advance.

Not sure which of these you need?

Tell us what is bothering you and we will say which analysis actually answers it — including when the answer is none of them.

Ask us