About CIMPLICITY OPC Products

CIMPLICITY OPC Servers

CIMPLICITY offers the following OPC servers.

The CIMPLICITY OPC Server allows OPC clients to read, write, and subscribe to changes in CIMPLICITY runtime database points.

Note: The CIMPLICITY OPC Server also provides its own window for viewing point details.

The CIMPLICITY OPC Alarm and Event Server sends requested data from Alarm Managers in all connected source projects to OPC A&E clients.

CIMPLICITY OPC Clients

CIMPLICITY offers the following OPC clients.

The CIMPLICITY OPC Client provides CIMPLICITY users with access to process data from OPC servers.

Displays point values collects from an OPC Server through CimView screens and the Point Control Panel without requiring a running CIMPLICITY project.

Displays alarm and event data that was received from an OPC server in the Alarm Viewer

OPC Simulator

An OPC Server simulator is included in the CIMPLICITY distribution.

The filename is ATLSimServer.exe and is located in the following folders.

OPC General Information

An OPC server provides a standards-based interface to some form of runtime data. The data may come from a specific physical device (e.g. a PLC) or from a Distributed Control System.

CIMPLICITY OPC servers:

• Conform to Data Access 3.0 specification.
• Are backward compatible with Data Access 2.0 specifications.
• Do not support Data Access 1 specification; version 1 is obsolete.

OPC is a technology standard initially developed by a group of automation industry companies and now managed by the OPC Foundation, a not-for-profit organization. The standard was developed to provide a common de-coupling mechanism for automation system software components.

In depth information about OPC compliance is available at the OPC Foundation Web site http://www.opcfoundation.org.

• The OPC Foundation states that "Data Access 3 specification leverages earlier versions while improving the browsing capabilities and incorporating XML-DA Schema."
• As of the CIMPLICITY 7.0 release the OPC book OPC - Fundamentals, Implementation and Application, Revision 3, New Revised and Extended Edition 2006, Soft Cover with DVD is available at the OPC Foundation Web site.

OPC leverages Microsoft's COM/DCOM technology. The OPC specification defines the COM interfaces and object behaviors common to automation software applications. Since the OPC standard is COM compliant, DCOM can be leveraged for distributed deployments. For example, an OPC client application can run on a computer node different from that of an OPC server. Neither application (the client or the server) is aware of this distributed architecture.