OPC Client Interface Reference

EP-DSX706
April 2010
 Issue Date
14 April 2010

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Contents

1 Getting started 5
OPC Client support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
OPC server documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
OPC-specific Terms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 OPC Client interface setup 9

Description of OPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
How OPC data transfer works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Callback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Explicit read request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Interfaces and methods used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Valid OPC interface configurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
OPC Client controllers, channels and points. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3 OPC Client controller configuration and addressing 15

Defining an OPC Client channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
OPC Client channel main properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Defining an OPC Client controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
OPC Client controller main properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Defining an OPC Client address for a point parameter value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Entering an address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Optimizing scanning performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
OPC Client scan packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4 Server and Station tasks for OPC Client 27

Testing communications with the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Troubleshooting OPC Client communication errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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CONTENTS

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Getting started
1
This reference describes how to set up, configure and test the OPC Client
Interface. (For a summary of other OPC interfaces, and their respective uses, see
the “Configuring OPC” section of the Server and Client Configuration Guide.)
This reference contains detailed information for configuring the OPC Client
Interface using Quick Builder.
Steps for connecting and configuring an OPC Client controller.
Complete each step before commencing the next step.

Steps Go to:
Install and set up the OPC server as specified in the documentation
supplied by the OPC server manufacturer.
Install any OPC server configuration files on the OPC client computer as
specified in the documentation supplied by the OPC server manufacturer.
Test communications between the OPC client computer and the OPC page 28
server computer.
Define channels with Quick Builder. page 16
Define controllers with Quick Builder. page 19
Download channel and controller definitions to the server.
Define points to address OPC server items with Quick Builder. page 22

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1 – GETTING STARTED

OPC Client support

The OPC Client Interface is an OPC client which supports communications to
OPC servers that meet the specification of the OPC Data Access Standard version
1.0a or 2.0.
The OPC Client Interface supports both local and remote OPC servers.

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 OPC SERVER DOCUMENTATION

OPC server documentation

The documentation supplied by the OPC server manufacturer is relevant, and
should be read before creating any OPC Client controllers.

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1 – GETTING STARTED

OPC-specific Terms
CLSID
CLSID is the class identifier that identifies an object. An object registers its
CLSID in the system registration database so the object can be loaded and
programmed by other applications.
group
A number of items with the same update rate and deadband.
item
A single data source of the OPC server.
OPC
OPC stands for OLE for Process Control. It is a set of standards that define sets of
COM interfaces (based on Microsoft’s COM/OLE technology) to be observed by
OPC clients and servers. This set of standards was established by the OPC
Foundation to foster greater interoperability between automation and control
applications, field systems and devices, and business and office applications.
When the term OPC is used in this Reference, it refers specifically to the OPC
Data Access Standard.
ProgID
A programmatic identifier. A registry entry that can be associated with a class
identifier (CLSID). The format of a ProgID is
<Vendor>.<Component>.<Version>, separated by periods and with no spaces.
The ProgID identifies a class, but with less precision. The ProgID is used to
identify the OPC server from other COM/DCOM components on the same
computer. For more details, see any setup and installation instructions provided
by the OPC server manufacturer.
update rate
The internal update rate of the items in the OPC server.

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OPC Client interface setup
2
This chapter describes how to set up an OPC Client Interface.

For details about: Go to:

Description of OPC and how data transfer works page 10
Supported architectures page 13
How Quick Builder uses controllers, channels and points to configure the page 14
OPC Client Interface

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2 – OPC CLIENT INTERFACE SETUP

Description of OPC
OPC provides data from a data source and communicates the data to any client
application in a standard way, thereby eliminating the requirement for an
application to have specific knowledge about a particular data source, such as
internal structure and communications protocols.
An OPC server and an OPC client, can reside either on the same computer (local
server) or on different computers (remote server).

How OPC data transfer works

OPC server data is available to the OPC client as items. To receive items from the
OPC server, the OPC client must gather one or more items into a group.
The OPC client requests the OPC server to create a group with a client-specified
maximum (at most) update rate and a deadband. The OPC client then requests the
OPC server to add items to the group. The update rate and the deadband of a
group apply to all items in that group.

Note
• There is no concept of hardware in the OPC Data Access Standard; there are just
items. An OPC server may represent a piece of hardware as an item and the item’s
value may indicate the state of the hardware. However, whether or not such
representation is available is server-specific.
• Although the OPC client can specify any update rate for a group, the OPC server
decides whether the request is honored.
• Although the OPC client can specify the deadband for a group, the OPC server decides
whether the deadband request is honored.

Callback
Generally, the OPC server sends data to OPC clients through callbacks. After a
group has been created, the OPC server creates a cache for the group items. The
cache is updated according to the group’s update rate. The OPC server sends only
updated values to the OPC client for items in the group if there has been
significant change since the last cache update (based on the group’s deadband).
This method of data update significantly reduces traffic between the OPC client
and the OPC server as there is no need for periodic read requests to the OPC
server. An OPC client gets data when there is a significant change. The level of
change required to trigger an update from the OPC server is defined by the OPC
client.

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 DESCRIPTION OF OPC

Explicit read request

The OPC client can also send explicit read requests to the OPC server,
independent of the server callbacks. The OPC client specifies whether the data
should come from the OPC server’s internal cache or from the field/hardware
device. This method of scanning is less efficient than callback.

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2 – OPC CLIENT INTERFACE SETUP

Interfaces and methods used

The following table lists the interfaces and methods used by the OPC Client
Interface.

Interface Methods
IOPCCommon SetClientName
IOPCServer AddGroup
GetStatus
RemoveGroup
IOPCItemMgt AddItems
RemoveItems
ValidateItems
IOPCSyncIO Read
Write
IOPCAsyncIO Read
Refresh
IOPCAsyncIO2 Read (OPC DA 2 only)
Refresh2 (OPC DA 2 only)

The OPC Client Interface implements the IAdviseSink, IOPCDataCallback and

IOPCShutdown interfaces.

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 ARCHITECTURES

Architectures
For the OPC Client Interface to communicate with an OPC server, the OPC server
must be installed on an appropriate computer. (The OPC Client Interface and the
OPC server can reside on the same computer or on different computers.)
To install an OPC server, install and set up the OPC server as specified in the
documentation supplied by the OPC server manufacturer.

Valid OPC interface configurations

The server OPC interface supports single-channel communications.

Single channel communications

A single-channel configuration.

Figure 1 OPC Interface Single-channel Configuration

Server OPC Server

OPC Client Interface

Alternate data source

The OPC Interface also supports an alternate data source. If the OPC Interface
connection to the primary data source fails, the OPC Interface connects to the
alternate data source.

Figure 2 OPC Redundant Alternate Data Source Configuration

Server Primary Alternate

Data Source Data Source

OPC Client Interface OPC Server OPC Server

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2 – OPC CLIENT INTERFACE SETUP

OPC Client controllers, channels and points

An OPC Client controller is Quick Builder’s mechanism for configuring one or
more groups with the same deadband. Unlike most other types of controller, an
OPC Client controller is an abstract entity, and does not represent a physical
device.
Similarly, a point parameter is Quick Builder’s mechanism for defining an item
on an OPC Client controller. During configuration, you map each item to an
appropriate point parameter on an OPC Client controller. Only floating point
number data types are supported.
An OPC Client controller manages groups as follows:
• A group is created for each scan period used by the point parameters (items)
defined on the controller. (That is, all point parameters that have the same scan
period are placed in the same group.) Note that if a scan period of 0 is used,
the item is placed in a group with an update rate equal to the slowest scan rate
of the server system.
• All points defined on the controller have the same OPC deadband. (Note that
the OPC deadband is not the same as the alarm and control deadbands that can
be specified for analog points.)
• The maximum number of items that can be configured in a controller is 735.
An OPC Client channel forms the interface between one or more OPC Client
controllers and an OPC server. You configure an OPC Client channel in the same
way as other channels, however, two properties have special significance as far as
OPC is concerned:
• Diagnostic Scan Period. This determines how often the OPC client tests the
status of the OPC server to ensure that it is OK.
• Background Scan Period. This applies to all controllers configured under the
channel and determines how often the OPC client explicitly reads all items
configured on a controller if that controller is configured with background
scanning enabled. This is independent of the callbacks.

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OPC Client controller
configuration and addressing 3
This chapter describes how to configure OPC Client controllers using Quick
Builder.

Note
An OPC Client controller is an abstract entity that is used as a container for OPC groups.
An OPC Client controller does not represent a real controller or a real piece of hardware.

For: Go to:
Steps for defining an OPC Client channel page 16
Steps for defining an OPC Client controller page 19
Defining an address for a point parameter value page 22
How to optimize scanning performance page 25

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

Defining an OPC Client channel

For an introduction to OPC Client channels and controllers, see “OPC Client
controllers, channels and points” on page 14.

To define a channel using Quick Builder:

1 Click to open the Add Items dialog box.
2 Select Channel from Add Items.
3 Select OPC Client from Type.
4 Specify the Main tab property values. See “OPC Client channel main
properties” on page 17.

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 DEFINING AN OPC CLIENT CHANNEL

OPC Client channel main properties

The Main tab defines the properties of an OPC Client channel.

Note
If you specify an alternate Host Name, Quick Builder builds a redundant OPC channel.
See the Configuration Guide for your server for information about monitoring redundant
channels.

Property Description
Name The unique name of the channel. A maximum of 10
alphanumeric characters (no spaces or double quotes).
Description (Optional) A description of the channel. A maximum of
30 characters, including spaces.
Marginal Alarm Limit The communications alarm marginal limit at which the
channel is declared to be marginal. When this limit is
reached, a high priority alarm is generated. A channel
barometer monitors the total number of requests and the
number of times the controller did not respond or
response was incorrect. The barometer increments by 2
or more, depending on the error and decrements for each
good call.
Set the channel marginal alarm limit to 10.
Fail Alarm Limit The communications alarm fail limit at which the
channel is declared to have failed. Set this to 20, that is,
double the value specified for the channel Marginal
Alarm Limit.
Connect Timeout Amount of time, in seconds, the server waits to connect
to the OPC server before abandoning the connection.
The default is 20 seconds.
Read Timeout Amount of time, in seconds, the server waits for a reply
from the OPC server after a synchronous read request.
The default is 2 seconds.
Note: When connecting to legacy third party control
networks, it is recommended that the Read Timeout be
set to 5 seconds.
Host Name (preferred) The name of the computer on which the preferred OPC
server software resides. If the OPC server is on the same
computer as the OPC Client Interface, the name must be
LocalHost.

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

Property Description
Host Name (alternate) (Optional) The name of the computer on which the
alternate OPC server software resides. If it is on the
same computer as the OPC Client Interface, the name
must be LocalHost.
Note: If you specify an alternate host name, Quick
Builder builds a redundant channel OPC connection. See
the Configuration Guide for the server for information
on monitoring the status of redundant channels.
Diagnostic Scan period The amount of time, in seconds, between diagnostic
scans. The diagnostic rate must be set to one of the valid
server scan periods. The default is 60 seconds.
This value is used as the rate for sending synchronous
requests for checking the OPC server’s current status.
Background Scan Period The background scanning period (in seconds). This must
be set to one of the valid server scan periods (defaults to
60).
This value is used as the rate for sending explicit read
requests of all items configured under a controller if that
controller is also configured with background scanning
enabled.
Note: When connecting to legacy third party control
networks, it is recommended that the background scan
period be set to 10 minutes.
ProgID The ProgID for the OPC server that is to be connected.
OPC server host time can drift If selected, indicates that the OPC server computer’s
clock (UTC time) is known to drift. This can occur if the
clock is synchronized to an external clock. Moving in or
out of daylight savings time is not a time drift as the
UTC time does not change.
Item Type Shows the channel’s type.
Last Modified Shows the date of the most recent modification to this
channel’s property details.
Last Downloaded This shows the date that the item was last downloaded to
the server.
Item Number This field displays the unique item number currently
assigned to this item by Quick Builder. You can change
the item number displayed in this field if you need to
match your current server database configuration. The
item number must be between 1 and the maximum
number of channels allowed for your system.

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 DEFINING AN OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER

Defining an OPC Client controller

For an introduction to OPC Client channels and controllers, see “OPC Client
controllers, channels and points” on page 14.

To define a controller using Quick Builder:

1 Click to open the Add Items dialog box.
2 Select Controller from Add Items.
3 Select OPC Client from Type.
4 Specify the Main tab property values. See OPC Client controller main
properties.

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

OPC Client controller main properties

The Main tab defines the properties for an OPC Client controller.

Property Description
Name The unique name of the controller. A maximum of 10
alphanumeric characters (no spaces or double quotes).
Description (Optional) A meaningful description for this controller.
A maximum of 30 characters, including spaces.
Channel Name The name of the channel on which the controller
communicates. You need to have defined the channel in
order for it’s name to appear in the list.
Marginal Alarm Limit The communications alarm marginal limit at which the
controller is declared to be marginal. When this value is
reached, a high priority alarm is generated. This limit
applies to the controller barometer which monitors the
total number of requests to the controller and the number
of times the controller did not respond or response was
incorrect. The barometer increments by 2 or more,
depending on the error and decrements for each good
call.
Set the channel marginal alarm limit to 10.
Fail Alarm Limit The communications alarm fail limit at which the
controller is declared to have failed. When this
barometer value is reached, an urgent alarm is generated.
Set this to 20, that is, double the value specified for the
controller Marginal Alarm Limit.
Background Scan Specify whether background scanning is performed in
addition to normal callback operation. Select Enabled if
you do not want the default (Disabled). The background
scan period is configured under the channel.

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 DEFINING AN OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER

Property Description
Deadband The OPC deadband, which applies to all items
referenced by point parameters belonging to this
controller. Note that although the OPC client can specify
the deadband for a group, the OPC server decides
whether the deadband request is honored.
The deadband Indices are defined as:
0 = 0.000%
1 = 0.001%
2 = 0.002%
3 = 0.005%
4 = 0.010%
5 = 0.020%
6 = 0.050%
7 = 0.100%
8 = 0.200%
9 = 0.500%
10 = 1.000%
11 = 2.000%
12 = 5.000%
13 = 10.000%
14 = 20.000%
15 = 50.000%
Item Type Shows the controller’s type.
Last Modified Shows the date of the most recent modification to this
controller’s property details.
Last Downloaded The date that the item was last downloaded to the server.
Item Number The unique item number currently assigned to this item
by Quick Builder. You can change the item number
displayed in this field if you need to match your current
server database configuration. The number must be
between 1 and the maximum number of controllers
allowed for your system.

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

Defining an OPC Client address for a point parameter

value
A point parameter is Quick Builder’s mechanism for “mapping” a single item on
an OPC Client controller. When configuring a point parameter, note that:
• The point parameter’s Scan Period is used as the item’s update rate. Note that
if a scan period of 0 is used, the item is placed in a group with an update rate
equal to the slowest scan rate of the server system. By default, the slowest
scan rate is 1 hour.
• Periodic scanning is based on OPC callbacks, not on OPC synchronous read
requests.

Entering an address
For Source Address and Destination Address the format for a OPC Client
controller address is:
ControllerName Address

Part Description
ControllerName The name of the OPC Client controller.
Address The address in the controller where the value is
recorded. See “Address syntax” on page 22.

If you would like help when defining an address, click next to Address to
display Address Builder. For details, see the help.

Address syntax
The format for the address is:
[AccessPath]OPCItemName [DataFormat]

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 DEFINING AN OPC CLIENT ADDRESS FOR A POINT PARAMETER VALUE

Part Description
[AccessPath] The access path is not normally required. However, it is
required for OPC servers developed using the Rockwell
OPC Toolkit. You need to see the vendor’s
documentation to determine whether an access path is
required.
The access path generally represents a device driver or
topic (if the server was previously developed as a DDE
server).
Note, if you do specify an access path:
• You must include the square brackets. (In this
particular case, they do not simply indicate an
optional part of the syntax.)
• There is no space between the access path and the
OPCItemName.
OPCItemName The address in the controller where the value is
recorded. You need to see the vendor’s documentation
for the syntax.
For example, if you are using the system OPC server to
access the PV of a point named sinewave, the address
would be sinewave.PV.
A maximum of 64 characters. Any printable ASCII
character that you can type, including the space
character, is supported.
DataFormat The data format. If you do not specify a data format, the
default is IEEEFP.
See “Data format definitions” on page 23.

Data format definitions

If you want to use a user-defined data format, you must define the format on the
server. For details, see the topic “Creating user-defined data formats” in the
Configuration Guide.

Format Counts
IEEEFP IEEE single-precision floating point
U3BCD 0 to 999 BCD
U4BCD 0 to 9999 BCD
U4095 0 to 4095
U999 0 to 999
U9999 0 to 9999

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

Format Counts
U100 0 to 100
U1023 0 to 1023
U8B 0 to 255
S16B -32768 to 32767
S8B -128 to 127
S9999 -9999 to 9999
U16B 0 to 65535
U15B 0 to 32767
U14B 0 to 16383

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 OPTIMIZING SCANNING PERFORMANCE

Optimizing scanning performance

The maximum amount of data that can be acquired from an controller is
influenced by the rate of sending scan packets to the controller. An understanding
of the OPC scan packets will help you configure points so that optimal data
acquisition performance can be achieved by maximizing the amount of data
acquired with each scan packet.
The scan packets that have been built can be listed by using the lisscn (list scan)
utility. Listing scan packets helps verify the scanning strategy. See the
Configuration Guide for your server for usage of lisscn.

OPC Client scan packets

OPC groups are collections of items with the same callback period and deadband.
In order to reduce the number of OPC groups (and hence OPC scan packets) you
should:
• Assign all points with the same deadband to the same controller.
• Reduce the number of different scan periods used for points on a controller.

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3 – OPC CLIENT CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND ADDRESSING

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Server and Station tasks for
OPC Client 4
This chapter describes tasks for the OPC Client controller that you perform either
on the server or from any Station.

For: Go to:
Testing communications with the server page 28
Troubleshooting scanning errors page 28

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4 – SERVER AND STATION TASKS FOR OPC CLIENT

Testing communications with the server

You use the OPC Client test utility, opctst, to test the:
• Connection to an OPC server
• Creation of OPC groups on a server
• Addition of OPC items into groups
• Reading and writing of values to OPC items on the OPC server computer
Before you use opctst you need to:
• Complete any OPC server setup and configuration as required. See the setup
and installation instructions supplied by the OPC server manufacturer.
• Install any OPC server configuration files on the OPC client computer as
required. See the setup and installation instructions supplied by the OPC
server manufacturer.
• Ensure you are logged on using the mngr account as this is the account that the
OPC Client Interface uses to communicate with the OPC server.

To run the opctst utility:

1 Open a Command Prompt window, type opctst and press ENTER.
2 When the Windows application starts, select the OPC menu option and
perform each of the menu operations in turn (that is, Initialize COM, Connect
to OPC server, and so on).

Troubleshooting OPC Client communication errors

If you experience difficulty getting the OPC Client Interface to communicate with
an OPC server, refer to the system server log file (accessible via an icon in the
Diagnostic Tools folder). The log file gives an indication as to the cause of any
OPC communications problems.

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Index

A S
alternate data source 13 scanning, optimizing performance 25
architectures 13 single channel communications 13

C T
channel, defining 16 testing communications 28
communication errors 28
configurations 13
configuring OPC, steps for 5
controller, defining 19

O
OPC
callback, described 10
data transfer, described 10
explicit read request, described 11
group, described 8
item, described 8
overview 10
update rate described 8
OPC Client Interface
architectures 13
communication errors 28
configurations 13
controllers and channels, using 14
defining 19
defining a channel 16
interfaces and methods used 12
optimizing scanning performance 25
point parameter address 22
points, using 14
scan packets 25
testing communications 28

P
point parameter address, defining 22

29
INDEX

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