dOPC and XML

dOPC was one of the first Client Toolkits worldwide which supported the OPC XML DA version 1.x specification created by the OPC Foundation (http://www.opcfoundation.org). The OPC XML DA specification can be downloaded there.

The OPC XML DA specification is based on Web Services instead of COM/DCOM. Web Services are based on http as transport layer as well as SOAP and XML. The OPC XML DA specification does not replace OPC COM, but is rather an extension of the present OPC COM DA specification.

OPC XML-DA provides several additional benefits:
The ability to publish plant floor data across the manufacturing enterprise using the Internet by breaking through any firewall. The capability to use XML, HTTP, SOAP and Internet technologies to develop OPC XML-DA clients and servers on non-Microsoft platforms (like Linux, Mac OS, Andrioid etc.). The capability to publish plant floor data in formats that are easily used by enterprise applications such as manufacturing planning, scheduling, quality and asset management.

OPC XML-DA provides several additional benefits:

The ability to publish plant floor data across the manufacturing enterprise using the Internet by breaking through any firewall.
The capability to use XML, HTTP, SOAP and Internet technologies to develop OPC XML-DA clients and servers on non-Microsoft platforms (like Linux, Mac OS, Andrioid etc.).
The capability to publish plant floor data in formats that are easily used by enterprise applications such as manufacturing planning, scheduling, quality and asset management.

However, as a dOPC developer you can easily change to XML DA communication. Instead of choosing the 'normal' server name (property ServerName in the TdOPCDAClient class) in your program just precede the server name with "http://..." to instruct dOPC to use XML connections. Apart from that the handling is the same as with a 'normal' OPC COM DA server.

If you would like to learn more about the OPC XML protocol I recommend the dOPC demo program's OPCXMLCore. It has been developed without the dOPC DA component and only uses the pure XML DA protocol.

Notes

If you want to develop a none Windows OPC XML DA client program then you have to change the default XML vendor to: sOmniXmlVendor at the beginning of your application.

Copy Code

uses
  xml.xmldom,
  Xml.omnixmldom,
  ...;

{$R *.res}

begin
  DefaultDOMVendor := sOmniXmlVendor;
  ...
end;

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