Useful OPC Links

OPC Foundation.

OPC Foundation site search.

OPC Foundation's Downloads page includes links to all published specifications, as well as header files, redistributable binaries and sample code.

Several options are available for filtering the displayed results, allowing useful 'queries' such as these to be run:

• Current released specifications
• All new downloads from the last three months
• Downloads currently in beta

OPC Foundation Message Board: forum for discussion and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). The Message Board now has its own RSS feed.

OPC Foundation Bug Tracking and Reporting system: before reporting a bug or a specification fault, it would be worth checking this site..

Ask OPC: archive of OPC Frequently Asked Questions prior to March 2003.

OPConnect: the OPC Foundation newsletter.

OPC List Servers (provided by OPC Foundation).

OPC Japan (and the same site in English).

We have been asked a number of times to provide listings of OPC servers and other OPC products. As several other sites are already doing this job very well, we hope you will find this collection of links useful:

• OPC Foundation's OPC Product Catalog lists most OPC-based products from Foundation members.

The following vendors also provide comprehensive server listings:

• ICONICS.
• Kepware.
• MatrikonOPC.
• Software Toolbox.

Tom Burke's Blog.
The official blog of the OPC Foundation President. Earlier posts may be found at http://opcfoundation.org/cs/blogs/tom/

Randy Armstrong's Blog.
Official OPC Foundation blog aimed at developers, with a strong UA bias.

TAC Blog.
Official OPC Foundation blog for posts from its 18-member Technical Advisory Council. The TAC exists "to guide, monitor and approve the technical deliverables of its OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) technology". It consists of leading OPC vendors, plus bodies such as Fieldbus Foundation, IEC and WBF.

OPC Exchange.
The blog of MatrikonOPC's Eric Murphy. One of the better OPC blogs - updated regularly.

OPC News.
Promising recent addition, with emphasis (so far) on UA and developer-related content.

Digital Bond.
SCADA and automation security blog, with frequent OPC-related content. Is your OPC product or installation secure?

Gary Mintchell's Feed Forward.
As editor of Automation World magazine, Gary takes a wider view. Makes good reading, but suffers from the journalist's disease of mostly believing what vendors and trade bodies tell him (he reported the release of OPC UA some weeks before it was actually available).

opcfr.
French language blog, by Michel Condemine of 4CE Industry. Earlier posts may be found at http://msmvps.com/blogs/opcfr/.

OPC Diary.
Japanese language blog majoring on OPC and Microsoft technologies.

Third-party recommendations.
The following pages, all from third-party sites, offer some useful recommendations for OPC development solutions:

• National Instruments' Tools for Troubleshooting OPC Interface Problems.
• CERN's recommended Test clients.
• CERN's recommended Validation clients.
• CERN's recommended OPC Servers.
• CERN's recommended OPC Toolkits.

OPC Error Lookup.
Web page providing a lookup facility for OPC error codes and quality codes. Implemented by Advosol Inc., using ASP.NET.

OPC Lookup.
Another web page with error and quality code lookup. This one is from ascolab GmbH, who also offer a similar facility as a free utility download.

OPC at CERN.
The best OPC end-user site, with an excellent collection of material and links to OPC resources. The FAQs page is arguably the best available of its kind.

Field Device Tool. FDT is an open technology for managing field devices. Unlike OPC, it is focused primarily on device configuration. It is currently implemented as a COM Automation API transmitting messages composed of XML data packets. FDT is managed by the not-for-profit FDT Joint Interest Group.

MIMOSA - the Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance.
MIMOSA is a non-profit organization, set up to facilitate the development of open electronic exchange formats for manufacturing and process equipment data.
A fundamental aspect of this work is the MIMOSA Common Relational Information Schema (CRIS), which makes use of XML.

OMAC Users Group (Open Modular Architecture Controls).
The purpose of OMAC is the operation of Working Groups to establish guidelines for development of future control products. A number of these groups exist at present, covering a broad spectrum of requirements.

These groups include the Microsoft Manufacturing Users Group (MSMUG), which includes a MUGOPC sub-team, specializing in feeding user issues into future OPC standards. This group aims to be an OPC User Group, where OPC Foundation is primarily a consortium of vendors.

IDA Group (Interface for Distributed Automation).
Taking its membership largely from Europe, the IDA Group's goal is to create a standard TCP/IP-based interface for distributed automation solutions.
It appears that IDA Group has superseded the former Open Control Foundation (OCF).

Object Management Group's Manufacturing Technology & Industrial Systems Task Force.
ManTIS's DAIS (Data Acquisition from Industrial Systems) is, loosely, a specification for a CORBA equivalent to OPC.

PLCopen.
International not-for-profit organization that supports the IEC 61131 programming standard. IEC 61131 is an IEC standard for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs).