| 2008-Sep-05 |
OPC UA
Security Assessment - Part 2
Digital Bond has
published the second in its 7-part series on OPC UA security
and vulnerabilities. Part 2 focuses on the positive findings, and
includes comments such as "OPC Foundation should be commended
for their security efforts", "The [OPC UA SDK] code base
is surprisingly clean of vulnerabilities for a code base of its
size", "The security event logging ... is the best the
Digital Bond team has seen in this space by far".
Future posts will focus on vulnerabilities in the specification,
the SDK and vendor implementations. Part 1, the introduction, is
also
available. |
| 2008-Aug-22 |
OpenOPC - a
great new open source OPC toolkit for Python
OpenOPC for
Python is an open source toolkit that arguably makes DA client
programming simpler than ever. We love it, and think OpenOPC might
even convert you to the Python langauge. Take a look at the kind of code you
could soon be writing.
(As an aside, it's wonderful to see some of the best innovation
in the OPC space continuing to come from the open source community,
despite OPC Foundation's overly restrictive licensing of
specifications and components.) |
| 2008-Aug-22 |
The
importance of the OPC DA Automation wrapper DLL
The OPC DA Automation specification was
originally intended primarily to support developers using VB 6 (and
earlier versions). With the rise of dynamic languages such as
Python and Ruby, this specification is perhaps more important today
than ever.
The DA Automation specification is normally implemented using a
wrapper DLL that sits above conventional DA servers. OPC
Foundation's own wrapper DLL is not publicly available (which
is odd, given the Foundation's stated commitment to quality).
This has inevitably led to 3rd-party vendors offering a mixed bag
of alternatives. Perhaps the best-known free option is from Graybox
- see our Free Utilities page for
download details. Let us know if you prefer a different wrapper
DLL. |
| 2008-Aug-22 |
OPC UA book
excerpt available
A chapter of a forthcoming book on OPC UA
has been published as a free PDF download. The chapter, titled
'Conclusion and Outlook' is primarily a justification of
the complexity of OPC UA. The download is available
from the OPC Foundation site, to members and non-members
alike. |
| 2008-Aug-20 |
PLCopen to
work on OPC UA information model for IEC 61131-3
PLCopen has announced it
will work with OPC Foundation on creating an OPC UA mapping of the
information model of IEC 61131-3, the IEC standard which addresses
PLC programming. PLCopen is an international not-for-profit that
supports the IEC
61131 standard. |
| 2008-Aug-18 |
OPC UA
Security Assessment
SCADA security specialist Digital Bond has
begun a series of posts reporting on a security assessment of
both the OPC UA specification, and OPC Foundation's UA SDK. It
is encouraging to note that OPC Foundation has actively supported
this review, and is taking steps to update both the specification
and the SDK in response to its findings. |
| 2008-Aug-18 |
Updated .NET
API
OPC Foundation has updated the OPC .NET API
to version 2.00.102.0, with bug fixes for DA and AE. The revised
downloads
are available to Foundation members only. |
| 2008-Aug-04 |
OPC
Foundation newsletter
The August 2008 issue edition of OPC
Foundation's "OPConnect" newsletter has been
distributed by email, and published as a web
page. Past editions remain
available. |
| 2008-Jul-30 |
UA DevCon and
Workshop, October 2008
OPC Foundation has confirmed the Unified
Architecture Developers' Conference and Workshop 2008, to take
place October 27-31 in Munich, Germany. The DevCon will run on the
first two days, and the Workshop - with a choice of embedded and
.NET streams - for the remaining three days. Places are limited,
and with OPC UA expected to be a released specification by this
time, demand is sure to be high. Early booking is recommended - OPC
Foundation has all the details. |
| 2008-Jul-28 |
UA Simple WCF
Applications
As well as an updated UA SDK (see previous
entry), OPC Foundation has also made available a simple set
of WCF applications written to the UA API. These samples
(client and server) rely on code generated by VS2008 tools using
the published UA WSDL and do not use the UA SDK. |
| 2008-Jul-28 |
UA SDK Beta
update
The UA SDK and Sample Code have been updated
to beta version 1.00.218.1. Amongst other changes, this release
adds the COM proxy configuration capability back into the
Configuration Tool, with support for DA and AE clients. The sample
server application is now installed as a service and is available
as a COM DA and AE server. The downloads are available
to OPC Foundation Corporate Members only. |
| 2008-Jul-26 |
OPC Analyzer
test tool update
OPC Foundation has updated its OPC
Analyzer utility to version 1.02. OPC Analyzer - available only
to Foundation members - is used at interoperability workshops for
monitoring the behavior of OPC DA clients. More details
here. Version 1.02 includes a number of fixes and
enhancements. |
| 2008-Jul-20 |
OPC UA Parts
1 - 8 available for final review
OPC Foundation has stated that the current
release candidate versions of UA
Specification Parts 1 - 8 are available for final review by
Foundation members. The goal is a full release on August 16th. The
only recent change to this document set is an update to Part 7 -
Profiles, released July 16th. |
| 2008-Jul-20 |
Core
Components update
Apologies - a little late with this
item...
Updated versions of the OPC core
components, .NET API
and sample
code have been made available. It turns out the wrong key had
been used to sign the .NET assemblies in the prior
version. |
| 2008-Jul-20 |
OPCTechs Demo
Server
Our listing of free
OPC server downloads has been updated to include the OPCTechs
Demo OPC Server. |
| 2008-Jul-15 |
European
Interoperability Workshop 2008 - Nürnberg
OPC Foundation will run an Interoperability
Workshop in Nuremberg, Germany, from Monday, October 6th through
Friday, October 10th. Focus will be on the existing OPC specs: DA,
AE, HDA and XML-DA. See OPC Foundation for
full details. |
| 2008-Jun-30 |
OPC Webinars
available for download
Recordings of two recent OPC webinars are
now available to download
from OPC Foundation. These are "OPC UA as a Competitive
Advantage" by ICONICS/Kepware, and "Unleash the Power of
OPC" by Software Toolbox. Both may be accessed by members and
non-members alike. |
| 2008-Jun-27 |
Updated UA
SDK
The UA SDK and Sample Code have been updated
to beta version 1.00.215.2. As well as bug fixes, the sample source
now includes examples on how to create a custom NodeManager. Due to
time constraints, the DA proxy in not included in this build. The
next release will include support for DA and AE proxies. The
downloads are available
to OPC Foundation Corporate Members only. |
| 2008-Jun-05 |
OPC-UA on
Windows without .NET?
According to Microsoft's PDC2008
overview, a session is promised on Windows 7 - Web Services in
Native Code: "Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with
support for building SOAP based web services in native code".
This raises the enticing prospect of the full UA stack on Windows,
without the cumbersome baggage of the .NET framework. We look
forward to finding out more! |
| 2008-Jun-05 |
Compliance
Tests Updated
OPC Foundation has updated most modules of
its Compliance Test suite - available
to Corporate Members of OPC Foundation. Coming exactly 12 months
after the last round of updates, numerous bug fixes are included.
These new releases are the result of a beta test program which
began in December 2007. |
| 2008-May-22 |
Free OPC-UA
webcast from ICONICS
ICONICS will host a free UA webcast,
"Applying OPC-UA as a Competitive Advantage", on Thursday
June 5th. Speakers include OPC Foundation's Tom Burke, Russ
Agrusa of ICONICS, and Roy Kok of Kepware. ICONICS has more details and
how to register. |
| 2008-May-12 |
OPC now
officially supports 64-bit computing
Updated versions of the OPC core
components, .NET API
and sample
code are now available. This release provides full 64-bit
support, plus all redistributables are now code signed by OPC
Foundation. |
| 2008-May-08 |
UA DevCon
presentations now freely available
The 2007 UA DevCon was held over 3 days
during June in Scottsdale, AZ. OPC Foundation has now released
PowerPoints and screen capture videos for more than 20 of the
DevCon
presentations. These are available to Foundation members and
non-members alike. |
| 2008-May-06 |
Join the
debate on OPC openness
Following our post last week, Matrikon's
Eric Murphy has
taken up the debate (again) on whether the OPC specifications
should be freely available. He's seeking your input - why not
let him know what you think? |
| 2008-May-01 |
OPC not an
open standard?
The debate on openness of the OPC
specifications continues
on the OPC forums, with OPC Foundation's justification for
its policy on charging looking as weak as ever.
An attempt is made to draw a distinction between IT specs, which
are traditionally free and open, and Automation specs that are
often charged. This distinction is moot: the OPC specs are
standards in both the IT and Automation spheres. Any protocol that
can run on Ethernet needs to be documented in a free and open way.
As an IT manager, I would not be happy running any OPC standards on
my network while access to specifications continues to be charged
or restricted.
As Randy Armstrong suggests,
you are encouraged to lobby the OPC directors to make your views
known. |
| 2008-May-01 |
OPC
Foundation newsletter
The May 2008 issue edition of OPC
Foundation's "OPConnect" newsletter has been
distributed by email, and published as a web
page. Past editions remain
available. |
| 2008-Apr-30 |
OPCFailover
offers unique advantages for redundant OPC solutions
Jemmac's OPCFailover is a simple,
lightweight tool that can greatly enhance reliability of OPC
solutions where multiple routes to the same data are possible via
two or more OPC servers.
See our Free Utilities page for more
information and access to a 30-day trial download. |
| 2008-Apr-30 |
OPC Unified
Architecture book announced
An OPC Unified Architecture textbook has
been announced, to be written by Wolfgang Mahnke, Stefan-Helmut
Leitner and Matthias Damm (representatives of ABB and ascolab).
Publisher Springer is currently
suggesting a publication date of January 2009.
See our bookshelf page for information on
this and other OPC-related publications. |
| 2008-Apr-25 |
Updated UA
docs now available
OPC Foundation's Randy Armstrong has
posted a new set of documentation
to support the UA SDK (available to Foundation Corporate
Members only).
Included are presentations from the 2007 DevCon, MSDN-style docs
generated from code comments, an architecture document (work in
progress) and updated diagrams. |
| 2008-Apr-16 |
New OPC
membership category for System Integrators and
Distributors
OPC Foundation has created a new membership
category for System Integrators and Distributors (SI&D), with a
fixed membership fee of $1500. SI&D members get access to the
OPC specifications and reference implementations (sample code) and
the Compliance Test Tools needed to self-certify OPC
components.
More details on the
OPC TAC blog and the official press release. |
| 2008-Apr-10 |
UA Events for
2008
Eric Murphy, writing on the new OPC TAC
blog, recently
itemized some of the OPC UA events planned for 2008. These
include:
- OPC UA Early Adopter
Developer Plug Fest, Foxboro, MA, June 2-6 - interop event for
early adopters.
- OPC UA Developers'
Workshop, Scottsdale, AZ, June 16-18 - on getting started with
product development.
- OPC UA DevCon, Munich, Germany, October 27-29 - a higher-level
view for architects, visionaries, end users and
integrators. An initial reaction is that we've now
had several DevCons, and we need more of the hands-on workshop
style of event to really get developers up to speed. Maybe it's
not too late to replace the Munich DevCon with a Developers'
Workshop in Europe? |
| 2008-Apr-10 |
New UA SDK
Beta
The UA SDK and Sample Code have been updated
again, to version 1.00.209.0. The main change is the restoration of
the sample code, which had been omitted
from the previous build. These downloads are available
to OPC Foundation Corporate Members only. |
| 2008-Mar-29 |
XML-DA
Interop Server
Note to users of our XML-DA Interop Server. The server platform has
been upgraded for better performance and with upgraded XML-DA
software. As a consequence, the range of available XML-DA servers
is currently reduced. Let us know if there's a particular
server you'd like to see running there.
Access to the XML-DA Interop Server is
free to registered users. |
| 2008-Mar-29 |
Further
Release Candidate specs for OPC UA
Upissued Release Candidate specs have been
made available for the following UA specification parts: 1
(Overview), 2 (Security), 4 (Services), 6 (Mappings) and 8 (Data
Access). Part 1 is generally
available, the remainder being for Foundation members
only. |
| 2008-Mar-29 |
UA
Developers' Workshop - Registration now Open
OPC Foundation will host a Unified
Architecture Developers' Workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona, June
16-18, 2008. This three-day event is intended to provide a solid
foundation for developers building products incorporating UA
technology. Registration, limited to 25 participants, is now open. |
| 2008-Mar-27 |
UA Release
Candidate specs and new SDK beta
The OPC UA SDK has been updated to beta
version 1.00.207.1, supporting new release candidate specs for UA
Part 4 (Services) and Part 6 (Mappings).
The UA SDK and corresponding WSDL are available
to Corporate Members of OPC Foundation. The new RC specifications
are said
to be available from OPC Foundation's Sharepoint site, but
we were unable to reach these.
Note: OPCconnect.com has an RSS feed to keep you
automatically updated with changes to OPC downloads. |
| 2008-Mar-27 |
New OPC
Foundation blog
OPC Foundation has established a new blog for posts
from its 18-member Technical Advisory Council. The TAC exists
"to guide, monitor and approve the technical deliverables of
its OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) technology". It consists
of leading OPC vendors, plus bodies such as Fieldbus Foundation,
IEC and WBF. The TAC blog has its own
RSS feed. |
| 2008-Mar-15 |
Further Free
Stuff update
Free Clients:
Control See's U.C.ME-OPC
demo download offers flexible alarm notification and remote
control. |
| 2008-Mar-14 |
Training and
Free Stuff updates
Our list of Training
Providers now includes OPC Competence Centre South
Africa.
Free Servers: added simulator and
toolkit demo from Graybox. |
| 2008-Mar-03 |
OPC
Foundation newsletter - March 2008 issue
A new edition of OPC Foundation's
"OPConnect" newsletter has been distributed by email, and
published as a web
page. The headline item from OPC Foundation President Tom Burke
includes an update on the first Independent OPC Certification Test
Lab, plus news of an OPC UA
Developers' Workshop, scheduled for June 2008. Previous
editions of the newsletter are also
available. |
| 2008-Feb-18 |
OPC and the
OLE Automation vulnerability
A recent Microsoft Security Bulletin has
caused some concern in the OPC community. The bulletin, relating to
a critical
vulnerability with OLE Automation, has been discussed both by
Matrikon's
Eric Murphy, and by Dale Peterson at
Digital Bond.
Murphy's post clouds the issue slightly by talking about the
origins of the acronym 'OLE'. He correctly points out that
OPC has little to do with OLE, but doesn't quite say that OLE
Automation is not strictly OLE either: 'COM for Scripting'
would be more accurate.
So, how many OPC systems will be impacted by this vulnerability? We
expect that many systems - a large minority - will make use of the
oleaut32.dll at the heart of this problem. Most of these will use
the copy from the Windows system32 folder, and these should be
patched - either manually
or via Windows Update. A small number will use a copy of
oleaut32.dll supplied by an OPC vendor. We suggest you contact your
vendor for details, but don't be fobbed off if you can see a
copy of oleaut32.dll in an application folder! |
| 2008-Feb-18 |
OPC Test Lab
- further RC updates
OPC Foundation has made further updates to
its Release
Candidate specifications for the OPC Test Lab, covering
Compliance Tests, Interoperability Workshops, and Independent Test
Laboratories. These documents are available to Foundation members
only. |
| 2008-Feb-01 |
First
Independent Certification Test Lab now open for
registration
The first Independent OPC Certification Test
Lab, to be hosted at ascolab
in Germany, is now open for
registration. The test lab forms part of OPC Founation's
enhanced certification
logo program.
At the same time, OPC Foundation has updated some of its Release
Candidate specifications for the OPC Test Lab. This
comprehensive set of documents covers the proposed model of testing
and certification for both OPC-UA and legacy OPC (COM)
products. |
| 2008-Jan-27 |
Delphi
support for OPC continues to expand
Developers seeking the benefits of native
SDK access to OPC will appreciate the ongoing support offered by
the Delphi community.
Prosys Sentrol, the outstanding
Rapid OPC Application Development Framework, offers full DA 2.0
compliance and now supports Delphi 2007. Likewise our free Delphi demo server - kindly provided
by Everest Software - is also updated for Delphi 2007
compatibility.
Why not discover the advantages of OPC development without the
baggage of .NET? |
| 2008-Jan-21 |
OPC
Foundation 2008 Random Status Update
On his blog, OPC
Foundation President Tom Burke shares his
vision for OPC in 2008. In summary, "OPC wants to be the
USB for plug-and-play interoperability between
anything".
However, it's hard to disagree with the anonymous
commenter: "this vision would be so much more convincing
if you could find a way to make the specs open again - like the USB
specs". |
| 2008-Jan-21 |
OPC
Foundation updates DA client analyis tool
OPC Foundation has updated its OPC
Analyzer utility - available to corporate members only. OPC
Analyzer is used at interoperability workshops for monitoring the
behavior of OPC DA clients. More details
here. This new version includes a number of fixes and
enhancements. |
| 2008-Jan-20 |
Free webinar
on OPC & DCOM Troubleshooting
OPC Training
Institute (OPCTI) has scheduled a free webinar - OPC
& DCOM Troubleshooting: Quick Start Guide - for Friday,
January 25. |
| 2008-Jan-10 |
OPC-UA to be
an IEC international standard
OPC Unified Architecture is currently going
through the process of becoming an officially endorsed
international standard:
IEC 62541-x. As part of this process a formal
IEC working group has been created. OPC Foundation has more information. |
| 2008-Jan-07 |
OPC
Foundation - free training seminars
OPC Foundation will host eight one-day
Training Seminars across the US during 2008. These Seminars are designed to
cover the fundamentals of OPC including servers, clients, OPC Data
Access, OPC Unified Architecture, best practices and
compliance. |
While every precaution has been taken in the
preparation of this website, its authors assume no responsibility for
errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages
resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
OPC, the OPC logo, and OPC Foundation are trademarks
of the OPC Foundation.