Software Toolbox Technical Blog

The latest OmniServer released in October – OmniServer V3.0 - includes enhancements to licensing and support management, as well as, several usability enhancements to the configuration interface including a new topic wizard and updated Configuration User Interface.

This second blog post in a series about specific V3.0 features will detail one of those usability enhancements - the new Topic Wizard - designed to increase your efficiency and the ease of getting started when you're working with OmniServer to integrate your non-standard process devices.

With TOP Server, one of the key strengths is the wide variety of different drivers/protocols to choose from for communicating with the multitude of device makes and models out there in the automation world.  There are, of course, all of the major manufacturers such as Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Omron, Mitsubishi and so many more organized into driver suites.

But what about specific industries such as Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Power & Utilities, Building Automation or IT & Infrastructure?  TOP Server has vertical industry suites, as well.

Continuing our series about specific industries covered by TOP Server, keep reading to find out specific details about the TOP Server IT & Infrastructure Suite including several great features that should make your lives easier in TOP Server V6.0.

You may have heard about the latest OmniServer released in October – OmniServer V3.0.  OmniServer V3.0 includes enhancements to licensing and support management, as well as, several usability enhancements to the configuration interface including a new topic wizard and updated Configuration User Interface.

The first in a series about specific V3.0 features - this blog post will detail one of those usability enhancements - the updated Configuration UI - designed to increase your efficiency and the ease of finding settings and components when you're working with OmniServer to integrate your non-standard process devices.

I'm sure you've likely at least heard about the latest TOP Server V6.0 released recently.  Aside from the great server-level enhancements to the user interface and more, there are several nice upgrades that should prove especially useful to our users in the Oil & Gas industry working with TOP Server.

Keep reading to find out more specific details about several great features that should make your lives easier in TOP Server V6.0.

Complications of Domains, Workgroups, & Mixed Windows Versions & Solutions

In the Operations Technology or OT world that most of our users live in, it’s normal to have multiple versions of Windows and systems that may not always be setup consistently but we have to make it all work anyway.   Connecting OPC clients and servers when the Windows computers are not on the same version, not in an Active Directory or, using older terminology, a domain, and having everything work well takes skill, and keeping it secure involves a lot of details.

In this blog post, our team asked me to explore with you the details involved to assist you with better understanding Windows Security and to converse more productively with your IT Team.  I’ll also share how you can learn more about how to make things easier on yourself through the use of OPC UA or with Tunneling.

It's common with OPC for users to not realize that it is the OPC client that typically defines how quickly the OPC server should poll or send requests to the underlying control devices and equipment the server is communicating with.

This blog post will discuss how important it is for an OPC tunneling solution to have some level of control over this frequency of polling in order to maximize efficient usage of your precious bandwidth.

There are some very exciting new features now available with TOP Server V6.0.  In case you missed it, I did a high-level post giving you an overview of the five biggest features from the V6.0 release - click here to see that post.

Today, I'd like to give you an in-depth look at some of the important updates regarding security included with TOP Server V6.  With ever growing security concerns across industries, ensuring that TOP Server V6 was providing the highest security capabilities as standard functionality was an important goal.  Keep reading to find out how TOP Server V6 has become secure out-of-the-box.

If you’ve seen any of our other posts on TOP Server V6 and its new capabilities, you may have seen us mention the Configuration API.  Unless you’re a developer, you may have been wondering what is that and why would I care?  We’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many of our users have had an interest in this new feature.

Today in this post, I will explore in more detail what an API is, what the configuration API does, how it works at a high level, and provide examples of the type of applications people are using it for.