I'm working on a project to interface 12 different lab devices to a PC to log the data to a database. All the lab devices have an RS-232 port for communications and I'm considering WinWedge or OMNI Server for communications.

Is there someone familar with both products who could give me the plus and minus of each? We are still trying to determine the communication requirements and protocol for each driver. I'm assuming most lab devices are slave units that send data as a result of a query. Others send data "unsolicited" when an operator presses a button on the equipment.

We are replacing an existing system running a Pascal program. All the drivers are custom and the code is not clear (i.e., not well documented).

 

I've used both although my use of Winwedge has now been over 5 years ago. Winwedge was simple and allowed me to quickly develop a method to query some stepper drives and return the values to Wonderware as DDE values. Later I had a project and I wanted to use Winwedge again but was told to use Omniserver. I'm glad I did because Omniserver was even more powerful and, after a few days, as easy to use. I used Omniserver to get data from a PLC into Cimplicity inorder to log some data. I'm a big fan of Omniserver. You can set it up to periodically poll or accept unsoliticed (sp?) messages. The example protocols they give you are for a barcode scanners which are typical unsolicited. I used the old version of Omniserver back then . I downloaded a demo of the latest version recently and it now support OPC communication as well as DDE and will also run as a service in NT/XP/2000.
I don't mean to bad-mouth Winwedge. Its probably made big strides over the last 5-6 years also, but I haven't used it so I wouldn't know. I know Omniserver and liked it.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I used OMNIserver several years ago and I was also impressed. Their tech support was great. Some had told me to checkout WinWedge as an alternate.