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by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff
Posted on Friday, April 28, 2006 12:00:00 PM Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox    | Abstract: | The OPC Foundation was started in 1996 by a handful of engineers who set out to solve the device driver problem in industrial control. |
The OPC Foundation, a not-for-profit, multi-vendor organization devoted to solving the connectivity problems of control technology through open standards, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. That milestone brings with it another: the organization's most significant specification to date -- the OPC Unified Architecture (UA). OPC-UA, which will provide a framework for connecting the factory floor to the enterprise, is due out in its final form this summer, with the first compliant products ready in the fall. The OPC Foundation was started in 1996 by a handful of engineers who set out to solve the device driver problem in industrial control. The foundation has signed 400 members to date. From the start, the group's humble goal was to "keep things simple," notes current OPC president Tom Burke. The first specification born of that mantra was OPC Data Access (DA). Using Microsoft COM/DCOM, it leveraged a simple object model that allowed any PLC to communicate with any HMI without writing custom drivers. Over time, the specification expanded to address alarms, events, and security functions, and eventually added XML capability to allow connectivity across corporate firewalls. Even as the specification evolves, however, manufacturers' investments remain protected. "One of OPC's claims to fame is that the applications developed in 1996 will work with new products developed in 2006," Burke says. "From a developer's perspective it can be frustrating, but it is a commitment we made to the end users that once you bought an OPC server, an OPC client should be able to talk to it no matter what." [Click to continue] |
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