Rockwell FactoryTalk data logger files?

I have seen posts about the Rockwell FactoryTalk ME DataStore Plus ActiveX control to save historical data to a CSV, but frankly the caveats seem very daunting. People have expressed concerns about handshaking, error handling, having to save data to PLC UDT, and performance impact on the HMI. I have logic running on a distillation column and do not want anything that puts the logic or HMI at risk.

I have the easy and safe to use Data Logger working that can show historical data on a trend, but it isn't very helpful for data analysis unless I can get the data into a spreadsheet. I think the data is stored in proprietary "MDF" and "LDF" files. It would be great if there was a conversion tool to CSV.

It looks like I have 3 options:
- Accept the headache and risk of DataStore Plus
- Hope I can find a way to convert "MDF" or "LDF" into a data file that I can import to a spreadsheet
- Give up and eyeball the trend the best I can

Any advice?

is MDF Measurement Data Format (vector.com)?


is LDF LIN Description File?


Can you post examples here (put them in a .zip archive)? It might easy to convert them to CSV or even to eXcel format.




update: see here; so a solution exists; converting data read into a Python scrit to eXcel is trivial.

Files attached

MDF here is not measurement data file/format.


so much for trivial.


Also, the .MDF does not have the data; it describes the data in .DAT files cf. http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=102982

So I can't convert it, right?