Software Toolbox Technical Blog

If you’re an existing user or you’ve been keeping up with our previously released Cogent DataHub blogs, you’re already aware that Cogent DataHub is renowned for its extensive connectivity options to industrial data systems, but most importantly its secure, high performance, scalable, firewall, DMZ, & proxy friendly data transfer within premises and to/from the cloud. However, it’s worth emphasizing that DataHub’s connectivity includes MQTT, IoT, OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC UA Alarms & Conditions, OPC Classic Alarms & Events, Modbus, Excel, ODBC & more. These methods of connectivity help users realize that with DataHub, data has the freedom to seamlessly and securely traverse across various platforms. We truly believe that "once the data is in DataHub, it can go anywhere, securely".

In this blog post, I'll provide insight into using DataHub’s Transform property to manipulate data that is being logged to a database table. To follow along with this blog, as a prerequisite, you will need to have an ODBC database configured and have DataHub set up to be writing to that database. For more information on connecting and writing to a database, please read our blog “DataHub – 5 Quick Steps to Writing to a Database Table”. Unlike loggers that only work with OPC data sources, DataHub’s capability to securely tunnel data and aggregate from diverse sources besides OPC empowers many different types of applications.

If you've been keeping up with our previously released Cogent DataHub blogs, you're already aware that Cogent DataHub is renowned for its extensive connectivity. However, it's worth emphasizing that DataHub's connectivity includes MQTT, IoT, OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC UA Alarms & Conditions, OPC Classic Alarms & Events, Modbus, Excel, ODBC & more. These methods of connectivity help users realize that with DataHub, data has the freedom to seamlessly traverse across various platforms. We truly believe that "once the data is in DataHub, it can go anywhere, securely".

OPC Router includes a wide range of features that you may already be taking advantage of. The product is regularly updated to add additional useful features and tools, and to resolve any known issues, as part of its continuous improvement process.

In this post, I will cover new features and enhancements available in OPC Router V4.28 including:

• New MQTT Sparkplug A & B Plug-in 
• MQTT V5 support
• Support for Oracle Cloud Databases & Wago IoT Cloud 
• Expanded Database and Variable Triggers

OPC Router already includes a wide range of features that you may already be taking advantage of. You're likely also aware that OPC Router is regularly updated to add additional useful features and tools, and to resolve any known issues, as part of its continuous improvement process.

In this post, I will cover new features and enhancements available in OPC Router V4.27 including:

• New plug-in for OPC UA Pub/Sub (Publish/Subscribe) for expanded OPC UA functionality with a new efficient method for transferring data
• Support for the  OPC UA Cloud Library providing the ability to create and use centralized specifications based on OPC UA Companion Specifications
• Easier Docker container support with an included, ready-configured Docker sample script

In a recent blog post about MongoDB, we discussed how non-relational database differ from relational databases like SQL and MySQL. The fact of the matter is, relational databases are widely used and still just as popular in the industrial automation space as ever. A popular alternative to SQL and MySQL is MariaDB which is an open source relational database.

This blog post (based on the article "What is MariaDB? A comparison with MySQL" by our partner company, inray Industriesoftware GmbH) discusses what MariaDB is, comparing it to MySQL so you can determine if MariaDB is a better database option for your company.

If you're already taking advantage of the wide range of features in OPC Router, you're likely aware that OPC Router is regularly updated to add additional useful features and tools, and to resolve any known issues as part of its continuous improvement process.

In this post, I will cover new features and enhancements available in OPC Router V4.26 including

• Expanded Edge device flexibility with support for Docker container instances
• Remote configuration for management of one or more instances (including Docker instances)
• Support for Influx DB2 and InfluxDB Cloud
• Enhanced support for referencing and management of external libraries 

I think it's safe to say that when we're discussing databases in the context of industrial process control, SQL Server is where most of our brains tend to jump. The proliferation of SQL (and other traditional relational databases) across most, if not all, industries for process control applications cannot be denied. But SQL (and others) do certainly have some limitations.

This blog post (based on an article by partner company, inray Industriesoftware GmbH) discusses how MongoDB, a non-relational database (i.e. NoSQL database) are fundamentally different from the SQL Servers of the world and how MongoDB can be a good alternative to relational databases for some applications.

Access to various industrial data via RESTful web services is increasingly becoming necessary in this era of inter-connectivity and big data. From sources such as devices with self-hosted web services to relevant market data such as weather information and pricing for commodities and energy, there is a host of relevant data to be integrated from such RESTful web services.

In this video training blog post, we will cover step-by-step how to easily connect to and consume data from RESTful web services and then push that data to OPC and SQL systems with the OPC Router.