What is OPC (OLE for Process Control) ?
OPC is an interface standard developed and maintained by the OPC Foundation.
The charter for the OPC Foundation was:
"To develop an open and interoperable interface standard, based upon the functional requirements of OLE/COM and DCOM technology, that fosters greater interoperability between automation/control applications, field systems/devices, and business/office applications."
Click on the logo to go to the OPC Foundation website.
Using OPC with IGSS
The OPC interface quickly became popular within the automation industry so the demand for both an IGSS OPC Server and OPC client-side driver arose.
The two interfaces were released as follows:
The IGSS OPC Server
The IGSS OPC Server allows any OPC client to connect to IGSS for the purpose of reading or writing values to the IGSS configuration.
Some typical scenarios of use would be:
The IGSS OPC client-side driver
The IGSS OPC client-side driver is used to connect to an OPC server. This is widely used as the communication channel between IGSS and the data collection devices (PLCs) in the process.
The client-side driver is not covered in this help file. Refer to the "Driver-Specific Help" file which can be activated from the Help menu in the System Configuration program.