[00:00] So you're thinking about moving your Siemens S7 devices over to the Siemens Enhanced Symbolic driver? In this video, we'll see just how easy the migration path really is. Even though you won't get symbolic browsing with the migration, you may see some performance improvements, plus get some support for some new data types. Ignition supports absolute addressing using two different syntax options. You can either use the same syntax as the regular driver, so there's no big learning curve to worry about, or you can use a superset of the TIA portal syntax where you can swap out the Operand type for the Data type. Whichever method you feel more comfortable with, go for it. From my migration example with an S7 300 device, I'm sticking with the regular driver syntax. Let's try it out together. In my Gateway, I'll navigate to Connections, then Devices, then click on Connections. Here I have an existing device connection called Migrate Demo, and I'm using the regular S7 300 driver to power that connection. In my designer, I've also got several tags associated with that S7 device set up in my tag browser and data's coming through for them.

[01:15] To kick off this migration party, I'll head back to my device connections in the Gateway, click on the three dots menu next to that regular driver connection, and pick rename. I'll just slap regular onto the name, and that's all it takes to break its connection with my tags. If we switch over to the designer again, we can see the values have all stopped updating, and we get an error message whenever we hover over the tag values. I'll switch back to the Gateway, and we can set up a new connection. This new connection will use the Siemens Enhanced Driver device connection instead of the regular S7 300 Driver device connection. We're gonna use the exact same name as the last connection -- MigrateDemo. As long as the name matches the old connection, it means we don't have to fuss with any OPC item paths for the tags we already have.

[02:04] Now I can pop in the address of my device. I'll just leave these default port and timeout settings alone, since I don't need to tweak anything for this demo. Next up, we should pick S7 300 as the device type. Then we can make sure the address type is set to absolute. This is the key, so the new driver can play nice with the old syntax and our existing connections won't break. I can also keep the rack and slot numbers at the default values. While this example doesn't require much work in the advanced settings, those settings will give you some chances for data optimization and ramped-up security. You can find more details about them in the Ignition User Manual, so keep an eye out for the relevant links below this video. As for password setup, you've got a few choices. I'm just gonna keep it on none, since in this case, my device doesn't need a password. However, it's important to know that both embedded and referenced secrets offer different levels of data indirection, which can make your passwords in Ignition more secure.

[03:04] We'll dive deep into those secrets management methods in other videos, so stay tuned. I'll switch back over to the designer, and we can go to the tag browser to make sure our new connection is working. Looks like our values are coming through. To keep our focus on the new driver connection and clean up our Gateway a bit, we can return to our device connections page and delete the old legacy connection. Now our migration is almost complete. Let's hop back over to the designer and take a quick peek at an individual tag. We didn't have to change a thing in the OPC item path for it to work normally. That's because the new connection's name matches the old one, the enhanced driver supports the regular driver syntax, and the migration path has full backwards compatibility. Now you have a quick and easy way to move your regular Siemens device connections to the Siemens enhanced driver in Ignition. By simply renaming the old connection to break it and making a new one with the same name, you don't have to mess with any existing OPC item paths.

[04:07] This migration not only may give you a boost in read speeds, but it also lets you use all the new driver features while keeping everything compatible with your existing tag setup.