Connecting Two OPC Servers

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Thread Starter

ULIANOV GIL

Hello people,

I'm working in a OPC integration project in Venezuela (sorry for my english) .

In this project I need comunicate a item in a OPC server A to other item i a OPC server B. In this moment, I'm using a OPC datamanager software (Matrikon) to accomplish it, but this software don't comunicate de quality property beetween both item (only the value property) so I need other aplication to perform the complete OPC integration

Does anybody known an OPC aplication that help me in my project?
 
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Michael Halhead

I not an OPC expert but I will give you my two cents worth.

The OPC standard is current three different communication standards, OPC DA (Data Access, this is the most common), OPC AE (Alarm and exception logging, I think) and finally OPC HDA (Historical Data Access). All of these "standards" only allow for a client to communicate with a server; i.e. you cannot make a client talk to another client, nor can you make an OPC server talk to another OPC server. The OPC foundation is currently working on the OPC DX standard (Data exchange), this will allow one server to talk directly to another server. However, I wouldn't expect to see any implementation of this standard for probably the next year.

In the mean time you will have to use a software package that has an OPC client and server. I have/am using Wonderware's InControl (we already had a couple of licenses) to do this, among other small things. I gather that IDX (Industrial Data Exchange, "http://www.idxonline.com/":http://www.idxonline.com/ ) can also perform this function. However, I have no experience with IDX but I told that is pretty good and stable.

I hope that helps.
Mike
 
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Bill Tavegia

What you are looking for is a multi-headed client program, commonly called an OPC Mirror program. There are several companies that make them.

Matrikon ["www.matrikon.com":http://www.matrikon.com ] OPC Data Manager(ODM)is one of the better programs that I've used. It is very user friendly, and lets you build your pipes and links in Microsoft Excel. They have a demo version on their web site, but it only runs for 2 hours. This is fine for testing & development, but you would want to purchase the full version for any real applications.

Emerson Process Management ["www.easydeltav.com":http://www.easydeltav.com ] has a program called OPC MIRROR. They also have a free download called OPC MIRROR LITE. This works okay, but is not as easy to configure as the Matrikon package.

Iconics ["www.iconics.com":http://www.iconics.com ] is another package that I've used. It works fine, especially talking to PLCs and other types of I/O packages.

I hope this helps.::

Bill Tavegia
Sr. Systems Engineer
Novaspect, Inc.
 
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