iFix Tags

I am trying to learn iFix and having some troubles at times. I have been asked to make what I thought would be a simple task (at least it would be in Wonderware). The request is for a screen in which batch data would be entered and sent to the Historian as an event. So, the operator would enter the batch information and hit a button that would log the event that a batch was started (with the batch number, etc). When the batch is ended, the operator would hit a button indicating that the batch was ended. In this manner, we would have a timestamp when the batch is started and ended. I have done a similar task in Wonderware using memory tags. But it appears that such a tag type does not exist in iFix (?). It appears that I have send the data (in ASCII) to a PLC and read it back from the PLC to log it. Or I guess that I can use the SIM2 driver included in iFix. Either way it seems rather difficult way to handle such a simple task. Am I missing some other simple means to accomplish this?