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Appendix 7: OPC Communication
XCell™ ATF Operations- Remote Monitoring and Data Acquisition
The following diagram shows the network architecture for controlling the XCell™ ATF
Equipment from an OPC Server and OPC Client Software over Profinet®:
The OPC Client Software is any OPC capable program that will connect through the OPC Server
to the XCell™ ATF Equipment. The OPC Client Software will Control the XCell™ ATF Equipment
remotely and/or read the status of the XCell™ ATF Equipment. Examples of OPC Client
Software include Microsoft Excel, WinCC HMI by Siemens, and FTView HMI by Rockwell
Automation.
• The acronym "OPC" comes from "OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) for Process
Control". Since OLE is based on the Windows COM (Component Object Model) standard,
under the hood OPC is essentially COM. Over a network, OPC relies on DCOM
(Distributed COM), which was not designed for real-time industrial applications and is
often set aside in favor of OPC tunneling.
• OPC is implemented in Server/Client pairs. The OPC Server is a software application that
bridges the communication of the PLC with the Windows environment and then with
the OPC Client Software application. Some common OPC Server program suppliers
include Delta Logic (OPC Server & Data Logger) and Siemens (WinCC Siemens).
• “OPC” is currently known as Open Platform Communications. The XCell™ ATF controller
uses the provided Ethernet (profinet) port to connect to and OPC server (master).
• OPC also comprises several standards including OPC Data Access (OPC DA) and other
standards for alarms & events, historical data, batch data and XML.
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