Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Applications tend to have a lot of moving parts. Here at Software Toolbox, we know that understanding these parts is important whether you are new to an application or a seasoned veteran who wants a more robust understanding for the sake of troubleshooting and optimization. Because of this, part of our job is to help you recognize and understand the components of our products to maximize your ROI when using our solutions.

In this blog post, we'll provide an overview of the different components of OPC Data Logger, an effective solution for reliable, event-driven logging of data from OPC server data sources (both OPC UA and OPC DA) to SQL and ODBC databases (including Microsoft Azure SQL) or text and CSV files. We'll cover the wizard-based interface used for Configuration, the difference between the Service and Runtime, and the Notification functionality so you can understand the purpose of each component and how to configure them to meet your logging needs.

DataHub is a solution in Software Toolbox’s portfolio of software that integrates various IT and OT data sources, and is particularly strong in working with a wide range of OPC standards, secure multi-layer data tunneling, databases, historians and more. If you've ever worked with DataHub, you've probably seen the "Scripting" tab shown in the image below with some sample scripts. Perhaps you've wondered what this scripting can do or were curious about the language that DataHub scripts use. With that in mind, in this week’s blog we will cover the "what" and "why" of scripting in DataHub, and point you to "where" you can find more resources of "how" to take advantage of the DataHub scripting engine, included free with all DataHub licenses.

LGH File Inspector for AVEVA InTouch (formerly Wonderware) enables easy, scalable, fast access to local daily historical data files (*.lgh files) logged by AVEVA InTouch applications without the limitations imposed by other solutions. There are many advanced features in the product and options for automating queries to run without user interaction to generate reports, exports, and more.  

As a continuation of our Tech Support Corner blog series, this post will look at how to set up a query in LGH File Inspector, how to export LGH data, and some of the configurable options available in LGH File Inspector. 

When people think of environmental sustainability, in general, they often do not think of the oil and gas industry. But the fact of the matter is that oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons are a large part of our global energy supply and chemical production. There are many environmentally-focused regulations that these industries must meet. Even with these regulations, the industry has begun to exceed these expectations through technology such as carbon capture as a method of reducing one’s ecological footprint.

In this third installment of our Environmental Sustainability blog series, we are discussing oil & gas industry regulatory requirements and how industrial automation software solutions empower organizations in the industry with monitoring of critical data so they can act on potential issues before they become problems, and support their reporting to meet such requirements and also with monitoring such that those requirements can be more easily achieved.

Here at Software Toolbox, we strive to be the “One Responsible Partner” for our clients - a motto we see as soon as we enter the door every morning. That extends beyond just our amazing sales and support teams. It also means being the One Responsible Partner for our Earth.

With Earth Day coming up, our team has decided to take this month to focus on the different ways our products help users achieve their own environmental sustainability goals and the conservation of natural resources in general. In this first blog post, we will take a look at how OmniServer helped a food and beverage user improve efficiency and reduce waste in a “sweet” way.

If you're a TOP Server user with OPC UA client connections to TOP Server, you may have noticed a section in the OPC UA Configuration Manager titled "Discovery Servers". Possibly you're using an OPC UA Local Discovery Server (LDS) but many of our users aren't sure what an LDS is, how to use one with TOP Server or why they should.

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, in this blog post, I will step through how to make TOP Server discoverable via a Local Discovery Server or a Global Discovery Server using the OPC UA Configuration Manager, as well as what this does behind the scenes so that you can make other OPC UA servers discoverable even if they don’t have a similar built-in configuration tool.

If you have been following our blog for a while or have been exploring IoT platforms available in the market, you may know that the Google Cloud Platform combined with the Google IoT Core is a frequently used combination in the industry. Google has recently announced that it will be shutting down the Google IoT Core. In doing so, Google is forcing many of its Cloud Platform users to switch platforms.

In this blog post, we will review detailed information about the alternatives to the Google Cloud Platform that are available for use with all of the IoT capable products we provide, and how the change works.