Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Welcome to the kickoff post of our Data Storage Deep Dive blog series! In this series, we will explore the crucial role of data storage solutions and Historians in industrial automation. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking into how solutions delivered by Software Toolbox can be utilized with Historians, helping you make the most of your industrial data.

OmniServer is a universal data acquisition software application designed to bi-directionally retrieve information from a wide range of Ethernet, serial, or USB devices that use 'non-standard' protocols to communicate, such as weigh scales, barcode readers, lab instruments, inspection machines, printers, & more. This data is then typically delivered by OmniServer to HMI, SCADA, MES, & Historian systems using standard protocols like OPC DA, OPC UA, & AVEVA Suitelink.

Building on last week’s Cogent DataHub v11 Security Enhancements Deep Dive blog, this post dives into a practical application of these security enhancement by focusing on the implementation of multifactor authentication (MFA) using a TOTP (Time-based One-time Password) key to secure a Remote Config connection to the DataHub. We will guide you through the process of setting up a built-in user with the “RemoteConfig” role, ensuring that remote access is equipped with the necessary permissions. To further strengthen security, we’ll integrate a TOTP key with an authentication app and define an IP pattern Principal to restrict access to specific source network locations. We’ll conclude by performing a successful login from a different system, thus verifying the effectiveness of our secure setup.

As briefly shared in our blog “Cogent DataHub V11 Features to Be Excited About”, Cogent DataHub has expanded its security configuration and options in the v11 release, offering even greater protection and flexibility of data sharing. In this blog we will explore DataHub V11’s comprehensive framework for managing access through custom configuration of Organizations, Users with multi-Factor authentication (MFA), Active Directory Integration, Security Principals, Roles and Permissions ensuring that only authorized individuals can perform specific actions or access a specific set of data.

Though you may have never needed to contact Software Toolbox for support, it’s always smart to be ready for any challenges that might arise. That’s why it’s helpful to know the resources you have at your disposal, should you ever need to connect with our experienced support team to overcome any challenges when using our solutions.

At Software Toolbox, we are committed to providing our users with timely and high-quality responses to their support incidents. While your question or issue might not always be completely resolved after the first response, you can expect to receive our initial response within 2 regular business hours after submitting a question, although it often happens much sooner! We even have some tools that can help speed up this process.

As a part of our Tech Support Corner blog post series, this blog post covers how the OPC Router’s Application Report helps us help you by allowing you to provide much of the information that we need to troubleshoot issues when you initially contact us.

If you've been keeping up with our Summer of IoT blog series, you've likely noticed our in-depth exploration of Software Toolbox solutions and the use of MQTT for IoT applications. In this latest installment of the series, our spotlight shifts to the OPC Data Client development toolkit. When speaking about IoT, OPC UA is a major player, which is why our focus for this post will be to delve into the integration of OPC UA PubSub (publish/subscribe) and how it leverages MQTT as its conduit for message transmission.

As part of our ongoing Summer of IoT Blog Series, this week we will continue to review the exciting new release of Cogent DataHub Version 11. In a previous post, Cogent DataHub V11 Features to Be Excited About, we covered how Version 11 introduced significant updates, including enhancements to the OPC DA Client Connections and User Interface. In this post, we will deep dive into features aimed at enhancing user experience, increasing application flexibility, increasing configuration scalability, and reducing troubleshooting time.

As OPC UA has grown in it's adoption, more device vendors are implementing OPC UA interfaces on their PLCs and other devices to increase interoperability. OPC UA has been proven to be an adaptable specification with its ability to accommodate industry-specific nuances in data formats, leading to implementations that expose information in ways that make practical sense.

As a middleware solution, OPC Router implements a variety of OPC UA features outside of the generic Data Access profile to cast a wide net for devices it can support.