Patent ID: 7831317

Claim:
An industrial automation system, comprising: a plurality of historian components configured to archive data within an organization, the plurality of historian components distributed at multiple hierarchical levels of the organization; a common data model representing the organization and distributed among system components residing on one or more levels of the organization to yield at least one distributed common data model, wherein at least one of the plurality of historian components is associated with a corresponding one of the at least one distributed common data model; and a directory service configured to operate with the common organizational data model to enable automatic discovery and exposing of at least a first of the plurality of historian components to at least one of a second of the plurality of historian components or one or more of the system components, wherein one or more of the plurality of historian components are configured to operate on at least one of a controller, a module, a chassis, a client, a server, a sensor, or a factory component, and wherein instructions associated with one or more of the plurality of historian components are executed on a processor operatively coupled to memory.