OPC DA/AE Server Development

The OPC DA/AE Server Solution offers a fast and easy access to the OPC Data Access (DA) and OPC Alarms&Events (AE) technology. Develop OPC DA 2.05a, 3.00 00 and OPC AE 1.00, 1.10 compliant Servers with any with Visual Studio 2022 C++ and either

• generating a server executable without the use of any DLLs.
• generating a .NET 4.8 assembly. This results in a generic server executable plus a .NET 4.8 assembly.

The developer can concentrate on his application and servers can be developed fast and easily without the need to spend a lot of time learning how to implement the OPC specifications. The server API is easy to use and many OPC specific functions, e.g. creating a group or adding an item to a group are handled by the framework. Even the complex asynchronous read/write handling is handled by the framework.

The “Framework” includes all OPC DA 2.05a, 3.00 and OPC AE 1.00, 1.10 handling and ensures the OPC compliance. It is implemented as a generic C++ based executable.

The “Server API” defines easy to use interface functions required for developing OPC DA/AE compliant servers. The OPC server is supplied as an EXE file with full C++ source code and the application adaptation part in 1 file. This imposes some limitations on the adaptation possibilities but makes the adaptation much easier and quicker. By using this API OPC servers can be easily implemented by adapting just a few functions, e.g. there are only 5 functions that have to be implemented for an OPC DA Server. The functions handle the configuration of the server and the read/write functionality of items.

The OPC DA/AE Server Solution offers unique features for performance and functionality improvements of the developed OPC Server like Event Driven Mode for Device Access; Dynamic address space with items added when they are first accessed by a client and removed when they are no longer in use; Item browsing can be implemented to browse the cache or the device/database.

We design and implement OPC servers for device, machine and system suppliers. The use of OPC servers eliminates the need of custom I/O-interface development and it becomes possible to create application software using OPC tools from different vendors. The reuse of software components makes Technosoftware GmbH very efficient and a reliable OPC server developer.

Dual License

The original products for OPC DA, OPC AE and OPC HDA are now moved to a dual license. Technosoftware GmbH provides different licenses depending on the component and on the ownership of a purchased license of the user of the sources. A single ZIP file or a single repository can contain multiple components where the sources have different license models. The valid license is in the header of each source file.

1. OPC DA/AE server source follow a dual-license model:
   • Owner of a purchased license: SCLA 1.0
     enables licensee to deploy their applications using the core component sources without being required to disclose the application code. All versions, current and future, are licensed under SCLA 1.0
   • Users that are not Owner of a purchased license: GPL 3.0
     Based on the GPL 3.0 license terms these users must disclose their application code when using the core component sources.
2. Samples and Utilities:
   • All samples and most of the utilities are provided under the MIT license for everyone.

Get Perpetual License without Support