I agree that the data is easier to work with outside the PLC....but the network load is finite. I have lots of other ideas I want to apply....and if I have to read everything cyclic....I'm going to hit a ceiling quickly... I have a real world scenario where a customer was using ignition....they wanted "all of the data", and I gave them the tag list it was very very long......and it worked "ok" for asset 1....4 $15k usd PLCs that have gigabit ports and cisco switches on a new network infrastructure. However when they added asset 2, 4 more top dog PLCs, intermittent issues started happening....network ports and communication drop outs....PLC ports going dark or choking....even issues in the other area were occuring where programmers were having trouble with unrelated assets. The solution? Edge driven technology. They moved to having the PLC push data to a database on an event....instead of cyclic reading. This completely solved the issue, and they were running 4 assets in the end with no more trouble. This obviously only works with modern controllers though.... We can "emulate" this a bit by using a "flag" in the plc that triggers the data transaction....