Category:OPC

OPC is an open connectivity standard used in industrial automation and IT systems of industrial enterprises. Interoperability is provided by the creation and maintenance of open specifications standards.

OPC was designed to bridge systems based on general-purpose operating system (e.g. Windows) and process control hardware and software applications. It is an open standard that permits a consistent method of accessing and describing field data from plant-floor devices. Those methods remain the same irrespective of data type and source.

The OPC server provides many different software packages with a method of accessing data from process control devices, such as a PLC or DCS. Traditionally, whenever a package needs to access data from a device, a custom interface or driver is to be written. The purpose of OPC is to define a common interface that is written once and then reused by any business, SCADA, HMI or custom software packages. Once an OPC server is written for a particular device, it can be reused by any application that is able to act as an OPC client.

Read more about OPC on http://www.commsvr.com/Howitworks/OPC/OPCManual.aspx

OPC Foundation page http://www.opcfoundation.org/