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The OPC Adaptor connects to one or both of an OPC DA and/or HDA Server, and provides the ability to read time series tag data.
OPC refers to a series of standards specifications related to process control, two of which are the OPC-DA and OPC-HDA standards. OPC-DA refers to a real-time Data Access server. It is used for accessing real-time data that can continually change. OPC-HDA refers to a Historical Data Access server. It provides uniform access to historical data that has been archived. Typically, both OPC-DA and OPC-HDA servers will be installed at a site.
Features
OPC Version Support
OPC refers to a series of standards specifications related to process control, two of which are the OPC-DA and OPC-HDA standards. OPC-DA refers to a real-time Data Access server. It is used for accessing real-time data that can continually change. OPC-HDA refers to a Historical Data Access server. It provides uniform access to historical data that has been archived. Typically, both OPC-DA and OPC-HDA servers will be installed at a site.
OPC Adaptor version support:
| OPC Server Type | Versions supported by the OPC Adaptor |
| OPC-DA | V2, V3 |
| OPC-HDA | V1.x |
Note: The OPC Adaptor has only been tested against Advosol, Matrikon, and OSIsoft PI OPC servers. It is not guaranteed that data fetches to other types of OPC Servers will match standard adaptor behaviour.
Read Support
The OPC Adaptor supports reading data (Get). It does not support writing data (Put) at this time.
Note: Only the OPC-DA server is queried for new tags, not the OPC-HDA server.
Sample Methods Support
The OPC Adaptor supports all four standard time series data sample methods used by IFS OI Server:
- Raw
- Average
- Last Known Value
- Linear Interpolate
Tag Properties
The OPC Adaptor will automatically set the following tag properties when importing tags from the OPC Server:
| Property | Description |
| Name | Name of the tag. Imported from the OPC tag name. |
| Description | Description of the tag. Imported from the OPC Description property (this is an optional property in OPC). |
| Min | Minimum value for trending purposes. Imported from the OPC Low EU property (this is an optional property in OPC). |
| Max | Maximum value for trending purposes. Imported from the OPC High EU property (this is an optional property in OPC). |
| Units | Engineering Units. Imported from the OPC EU Units property (this is an optional property in OPC). |
Datum Quality
The OPC Adaptor accesses the OPC Quality flags to determine the quality of each returned datum. The following mappings are in effect between the OPC quality bit field and the Server Confidence value:
| Quality | OPC Quality Flags Value* | Server Confidence |
| Bad | 0x00 | 0 |
| Uncertain | 0x40 | 0 |
| N/A - not used by OPC | 0x80 | 0 |
| Good | 0xC0 | 100 |
* The above hexadecimal values represent the OPC Quality Flags, which is 8 bits of data. Only the upper 2 bits are used for the quality status. The lower 6 bits are used for substatus and limit status – these are shown as 0 above for the purposes of illustration, and are ignored by the OPC Adaptor.
Error Logging
The OPC Adaptor uses IFS OI Logger to log error messages. This is a prerequisite for the installation of IFS OI Server.
Example Datasource Settings
This section provides examples of the OPC Adaptor configuration for each data source type.
Matrikon Settings
Example settings for Matrikon are shown below. Key points to note are:
- Matrikon servers support Flat searching, therefore the DA Search Type should be set to Flat and the following settings should be left blank:
- DA Root Folder Path
- DA Search Sub Folders
- DA Excluded Sub Folders
- DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags
- Matrikon servers do not prepend the server name to the tag name, therefore the following settings should be left blank:
- HDA Server Id
- DA Server Id
- The DA Server Type and HDA Server Type settings should be set to Matrikon.
| Parameter | Example |
| DA Server Identification | |
| DA Host | OPCDA01 |
| DA Server Type | Matrikon |
| DA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| DA Server Name | Matrikon.OPC.Simulation.1 |
| DA Server GUID | |
| DA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| DA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| DA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| DA Password | password |
| DA Server Type Specific Information | |
| DA Server Id | |
| DA Search Type | Flat |
| DA Root Folder Path | |
| DA Search Sub Folders | |
| DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags | |
| DA Excluded Sub Folders | |
| HDA Server Identification | |
| HDA Host | OPCHDA01 |
| HDA Server Type | Matrikon |
| HDA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| HDA Server Name | Matrikon.OPC.DesktopHistorian.1 |
| HDA Server GUID | |
| HDA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| HDA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| HDA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| HDA Password | password |
| HDA Server Type Specific Information | |
| HDA Server Id |
Standard (Advosol) Settings
Example settings for a Standard (Advosol) server are shown below. Key points to note are:
- Standard servers support Flat searching, therefore the DA Search Type should be set to Flat and the following settings should be left blank:
- DA Root Folder Path
- DA Search Sub Folders
- DA Excluded Sub Folders
- DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags
- Standard servers do not prepend the server name to the tag name, therefore the following settings should be left blank:
- HDA Server Id
- DA Server Id
- The DA Server Type and HDA Server Type settings should be set to Standard.
| Parameter | Example |
| DA Server Identification | |
| DA Host | OPCDA01 |
| DA Server Type | Standard |
| DA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| DA Server Name | Advosol.SimDAServer.1 |
| DA Server GUID | |
| DA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| DA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| DA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| DA Password | password |
| DA Server Type Specific Information | |
| DA Server Id | |
| DA Search Type | Flat |
| DA Root Folder Path | |
| DA Search Sub Folders | |
| DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags | |
| DA Excluded Sub Folders | |
| HDA Server Identification | |
| HDA Host | OPCHDA01 |
| HDA Server Type | Standard |
| HDA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| HDA Server Name | Advosol.HDA.Test.1 |
| HDA Server GUID | |
| HDA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| HDA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| HDA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| HDA Password | password |
| HDA Server Type Specific Information | |
| HDA Server Id |
OSIsoft PI Settings
Example settings for a PI server are shown below. Key points to note are:
- Most PI Servers do not support Flat searching, therefore the DA Search Type should be set to Tree and the following settings must be populated:
- DA Root Folder Path
- DA Search Sub Folders
- DA Excluded Sub Folders (optional)
- DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags
- PI servers prepend the server name to the tag name, therefore the following settings must be populated with the PI Server ID:
- HDA Server Id
- DA Server Id
- The DA Server Type and HDA Server Type settings should be set to PI.
| Parameter | Example |
| DA Server Identification | |
| DA Host | OPCDA01 |
| DA Server Type | PI |
| DA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| DA Server Name | OSI.DA.1 |
| DA Server GUID | |
| DA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| DA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| DA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| DA Password | password |
| DA Server Type Specific Information | |
| DA Server Id | \\PERPI01\ |
| DA Search Type | Tree |
| DA Root Folder Path | \\PERPI01 |
| DA Search Sub Folders | Y |
| DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags | N |
| DA Excluded Sub Folders | %OSI,TestFolder |
| HDA Server Identification | |
| HDA Host | OPCHDA01 |
| HDA Server Type | PI |
| HDA Server Process Information - Specify only one, not both | |
| HDA Server Name | OSI.HDA.1 |
| HDA Server GUID | |
| HDA Server Authentication - If required, specify ALL fields | |
| HDA Windows Domain | INTERNAL |
| HDA User Name | OPCAdmin |
| HDA Password | password |
| HDA Server Type Specific Information | |
| HDA Server Id | \\PERPI01\ |
How to Find PI Server Properties
Follow the steps below to find the DA Server Id, HDA Server Id, and DA Root Folder Path settings for a PI Server:
On the PI Server, open the PI System Management Tools (Start > Programs > PI System > PI Management Tools).
The available servers on the machine are listed, as per the following example.
In the example above, there are two PI Server connections configured:
- VMCPOCAPPON
- VMCPOCPI
Using this example, we will shows the settings for the first server:
- DA Server Id: \\VMCPOCAPPON\
- HDA Server Id: \\VMCPOCAPPON\
- DA Root Folder Path: \\VMCPOCAPPON
The root path could be restricted further by setting a sub-folder as the root path e.g. \\VMCPOCAPPON\Folder1\SubFolder1
OPC Adaptor Settings
The following table list the adaptor's parameters, along with the name and type to be used in the Import/Export spreadsheet.
| Parameter | Description | Name | Type |
| DA Host | Optional name of the physical machine containing the OPC server. If left blank, e4helpcenter.petroleumplace.com will be used. | DAHost | String |
| DA Server Type | Type of the OPC DA server instance on the specified machine. When configuring a PI datasource the type must be set to ‘PI’. Leaving the server type as 'Standard' will result in inaccurate values being returned for raw spot fetches. Options: PI, Matrikon, Standard, Exaquantum. | DAServerType | String |
| DA Server Name | Name (Prog ID) of the OPC DA server instance on the specified machine. Either the DA Server GUID or DA Server Name should be configured, but not both. | DAServerProgId | String |
| DA Server GUID | GUID (CLSID) of the OPC DA server instance on the specified machine. Either the DA Server GUID or DA Server Name should be configured, but not both. | DAServerClsId | String |
| DA Windows Domain | Optional Windows Active Directory domain to use to authenticate a user when connecting to a remote machine. | DAWindowsDomain | String |
| DA User Name | Optional username for authentication when connecting to a remote machine. | DAUserName | String |
| DA Password | Optional password for authentication when connecting to a remote machine. | DAPassword | EncryptedString |
| DA Server Id | Optional OPC DA server root level name. On some OPC data sources the server root level name is prefixed on all tag names causing tag names to be unnecessarily long. This setting allows the prefix to be excluded from the tag names. | DARootLevelTagPrefix | String |
| DA Search Type | The search type used for finding the list of tags on the server. Options: Flat, Tree. | DASearchType | String |
| DA Root Folder Path | Path to the root folder containing the list of tags on the server used as the starting point for the Tree search method. Not required when using the Flat search method. | DARootFolderPath | String |
| DA Search Sub Folders | Value indicating whether sub folders should be searched when using the Tree search method. Options: True, False. | DASearchSubFolders | Boolean |
| DA Treat Sub Folders As Tags | Value indicating whether sub folders should be included in the tag list returned by the server when using the Tree search method. Options: True, False. | DATreatSubFoldersAsTags | Boolean |
| DA Excluded Sub Folders | Optional comma separated list of sub folders to exclude from the search when using the Tree search method. | DAExcludedSubFolders | String |
| HDA Host | Optional name of the physical machine containing the OPC server. If left blank e4helpcenter.petroleumplace.com will be used. | HdaHost | String |
| HDA Server Type | Type of the OPC HDA server instance on the specified machine. When configuring a PI datasource the type must be set to ‘PI’. Leaving the server type as 'Standard' will result in inaccurate values being returned for raw spot fetches. Options are: PI, Matrikon, Standard, Exaquantum. | HdaServerType | String |
| HDA Server Name | Name (Prog ID) of the OPC HDA server instance on the specified machine. Either the HDA Server GUID or HDA Server Name should be configured, but not both. If neither is configured the DA Server settings will be used. | HdaServerProgId | String |
| HDA Server GUID | GUID (CLSID) of the OPC HDA server instance on the specified machine. Either the HDA Server GUID or HDA Server Name should be configured, but not both. If neither is configured the DA Server settings will be used. | HdaServerClsId | String |
| HDA Windows Domain | Optional Windows Active Directory domain to use to authenticate a user when connecting to a remote machine. | HdaWindowsDomain | String |
| HDA User Name | Optional username for authentication when connecting to a remote machine. | HdaUserName | String |
| HDA Password | Optional password for authentication when connecting to a remote machine. | HdaPassword | EncryptedString |
| HDA Server Id | Optional OPC HDA server root level name. On some OPC data sources the server root level name is prefixed on all tag names causing tag names to be unnecessarily long. This setting allows the prefix to be excluded from the tag names. This setting should match the DA Server Id. | HdaRootLevelTagPrefix | String |
Release History
- OPC Adaptor Features 4.9.3
- Updated the DA Cache Manager Service to improve support for Edge Host
- OPC Adaptor Features 4.4.6
- Initial version