Software Toolbox Technical Blog

OPC Data Client and NuGet: The What, Why, and How

5 min read

By Zachary Parham on Feb 8, 2024 2:00:00 PM

Software Toolbox has been a fixture in the automation industry since 1996, offering software tools and components from project conception to completion. Our expert staff is committed to helping customers leverage current technologies while offering ways to enhance or expand systems and approaches to achieve even greater returns. When it comes to our OPC Data Client Development Toolkit, that promise remains the same, and we want to help you make the best decisions for your development workflow.

The OPC Data Client has offered the usage of NuGet packages since 2016 as an alternative to adding assembly references via the components when writing custom OPC client applications. As our users have moved towards the use of NuGet, we made this a requirement for .NET Framework beginning with our V2022.2 release. In this blog post and accompanying video, we will cover what NuGet is, when to use it, and how to use it if it makes sense for your requirements.

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OPC Data Client 2023.2 Adds Python.NET Support

6 min read

By Kyle Persyn on Dec 7, 2023 2:00:00 PM

Developers that have leveraged our OPC Data Client toolkit for their custom OPC client development needs know that we’ve historically supported Python as a COM development language, but that had always come with limitations and a desire from our user base for a more modern option.

In the latest V2023.2 release, OPC Data Client now adds support for Python.NET, while also announcing the deprecation of the older COM approach. The newer Python.NET option offers many advantages including, but not limited to:

  • Modern, maintained Python.NET package (pythonnet), instead of the older pypiwin32 package
  • Added performance and reliability that comes from using the OPC Data Client .NET API over the COM API
  • Access to .NET features, such as generics, methods overloads, and callbacks
  • Easier coding

With the added support for Python.NET, we have also added more than 270 Python.NET examples to make it as easy as possible for our users to learn how this works within our product. PyCharm is now listed as one of the primary development environments.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the advantages that Python.NET has over its predecessor, let’s see it in action!

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OPC Data Client 2023.1  Adds .NET 7 support, OPC UA security management improvements & more examples

6 min read

By Ganesh Kalipershad on Jun 22, 2023 2:00:00 PM

With the release of the OPC Data Client 2023.1 toolkit, custom OPC client developers will benefit from improvements targeted at platform support, developer productivity, and custom application end user productivity.  If you missed the OPC Data Client 2022 releases, be sure and read what we added to OPC Data Client in 2022. As always, OPC Data Client license holders on an active support and maintenance agreement are entitled to free upgrades.

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OPC Data Client 2022.1 .NET 6, Win1021H2 Support, New Examples & More

6 min read

By Ganesh Kalipershad on Mar 31, 2022 2:00:00 PM


Following on the recent OPC Data Client 2021.3 release a few months ago, the OPC Data Client toolkit has been updated again to give developers more options, help them deal with Microsoft technology changes, and add new functionality to their applications. We will cover the highlights here in this technically deep blog post.

Be sure to read about the DCOM hardening that Microsoft is performing and options to be ready, to get ahead of potential support calls from your users.

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OPC Data Client 2021.3 - Windows 11, Server 2022, Examples & More

6 min read

By Ganesh Kalipershad on Nov 18, 2021 2:00:00 PM


Following on the recent OPC Data Client 2021.2 release a few months ago, the OPC Data Client toolkit has been updated again to further extend it's OPC UA client functionality. 

The new updates provide developers of custom OPC client applications with new operating system support, even more examples including Powershell examples, and a large number of improvements to all the supported OPC interfaces to increase flexibility, troubleshooting, and user experience, while further decreasing development time. 

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Exploring OPC UA - Configuring OPC Data Client for OPC UA Servers

6 min read

By Kevin Rutherford on Jul 22, 2021 2:00:00 PM


If you've been following our ongoing Exploring OPC UA blog series, we've been covering key Software Toolbox solutions and the specifics of configuring OPC UA security and connectivity.

In this eighth post of the series, we will focus on the OPC Data Client development toolkit, with the primary topic being how to exchange security certificates and establish a trust relationship between your custom OPC UA client and an OPC UA server.

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OPC Data Client 2021.2 - OPC UA Functionality Extensions

7 min read

By Ganesh Kalipershad on Jun 17, 2021 2:00:00 PM


Following on the recent OPC Data Client 2021.1 release a few months ago, the OPC Data Client toolkit has been updated again to further extend it's OPC UA client functionality. 

The new updates provide developers of custom OPC client applications new options to interact with even more OPC UA servers or more richly with existing OPC UA servers. This blog post teaches you how OPC UA PubSub security is different from regular OPC UA security, how to improve JSON/OPC UA PubSub interoperability with a new utility, and why you might care about OPC UA File Transfer. 

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OPC Data Client 2021.1 - Developer Productivity, .NET 5 Support & More

6 min read

By Ganesh Kalipershad on Mar 25, 2021 2:00:00 PM


Developers of custom OPC client applications have new options, enhanced troubleshooting tools, runtime configuration flexibility, and improved utilities to help them in the recently released 2021.1 (5.60) version of the OPC Data Client Toolkit.

In this technically hot blog post, we will cover the release highlights with links to documentation, and, as always, the full detailed release notes are available in our knowledge base. Also if you did not see the 2020.3 (5.59) release post, that one was packed with technical details.

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