Niagara virtuals provide an attractive alternative to creating Niagara proxy points when engineering a Supervisor station—especially for general Px page presentation. With enhancements starting in AX-3.5 and continued in AX-3.7, it is expected that this feature should dramatically reduce the general need for Niagara proxy points. Niagara virtuals are also an integral part in the “PxViewTag” export tag process—although in that case the creation of them is basically “automatic”.

Prior to Niagara virtuals, accessing any real-time data that originates in another NiagaraAX station required creating Niagara proxy points, under the Points extension of an associated NiagaraStation component. The usual “large scale” application for Niagara proxy points was in a Supervisor station, where values in remote JACE stations could be modeled, then be graphically presented on Px pages hosted by the Supervisor. A station in a JACE may also have a few Niagara proxy points, typically in cases where remote data is required within its control logic. However, Niagara proxy points have historically been synonymous with a Supervisor. For more details on Niagara proxy points, see Niagara proxy point notes.