Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Cogent DataHub® (from our developer partner/publisher Skkynet) provides a wide selection of connectivity options to OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC A&E, Databases, Excel, ODBC, DDE, Linux, Modbus.  As you may have already learned recently, DataHub Version 10 now includes support for integration with a wide range of common external historians. This expands your options for which data sources are compatible for historization in your chosen historian solution beyond the historian's native interfaces.

In this blog post, we'll detail how to get started integrating your data sources accessible by DataHub with AVEVA™ Insight, by writing data to your AVEVA Insight instance while also making that same historical data available for trending, visualization and reporting for both DataHub and external historical clients supporting OPC UA Historical Access (HA). 

Software Toolbox has a long-standing history of offering supplemental solutions that fit right in with AVEVA™ (formerly Wonderware®) projects. Many of you will be familiar with our TOP Server for AVEVA™ that offers a variety of device connectivity options, and a variety of client interface options like SuiteLink, OPC DA, and OPC UA.

SuiteLink is a communications protocol that runs over TCP/IP at the application layer, created by Wonderware to replace/succeed FastDDE, in the mid-1990's. Unlike OPC DA, SuiteLink doesn’t rely on COM or DCOM technology, making SuiteLink a common choice for remote connectivity to Software Toolbox solutions.

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this post shares best practices and procedures to follow when attempting to troubleshoot a SuiteLink connection, specifically when it comes to using SuiteLink clients with TOP Server. While this post specifically uses TOP Server as the SuiteLink server, the same techniques and concepts also apply to OmniServer, which also has a SuiteLink client Interface and is commonly used with AVEVA solutions.

If you are reading this post, chances are that you are somewhat familiar with TOP Server as well as how to configure it to communicate with various devices. Perhaps, you are also familiar with how to configure different settings, OPC UA endpoint settings, Licensing, Stop and Start the Service, and, if you are a developer, you might be familiar with the development resources that TOP Server offers such as the Remote Config REST API and the OPC.NET interface.

However, during our daily interaction with end-users, we often find that there is a misconception of what the TOP Server application is composed of and how each component contributes to delivering the product that you interact with daily.

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this short post will discuss the various components of TOP Server and clarify how each component contributes to the macro process that allows the application to deliver communication between your process devices and your various IT/OT systems.

Cogent DataHub is known for its extensive connectivity to OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC A&E, Databases, Excel, ODBC, DDE, Linux, Modbus.  As you may have already learned, the DataHub Version 10 now includes support for integration with a wide range of common external historians, expanding your options for which data sources are compatible for historization in your chosen historian solution.

In this blog post, we'll detail how to get started integrating your data sources accessible by DataHub with AVEVA™ Historian by writing data to your AVEVA Historian while also making that same historical data available for trending, visualization and reporting for both DataHub and external historical clients supporting OPC UA Historical Access (HA). 

If you've seen our other, more detailed posts (specifically our Exploring OPC UA post and the DataHub OPC UA video how-to) on getting Cogent DataHub working with OPC UA clients and servers, you are probably already familiar with configuring Cogent DataHub for secure access from an OPC UA client. However, we are commonly asked how to quickly get the DataHub OPC UA server interface ready for an OPC UA client to securely connect for accessing data from the variety of other interfaces that DataHub supports.

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this short post covers just the basics for setting up the Cogent DataHub OPC UA server interface to use the highest level of security and to require a client to specify a username and password for authentication.

If you’re a user of the Allen-Bradley ControlLogix Ethernet driver in TOP Server for AVEVA, you may be familiar with the different protocol modes available during device configuration. The three distinct options of Symbolic, Logical Blocking, and Logical Non-Blocking provide users with advanced control over how data is read and addressed from the controller.

Configuring protocol modes is usually only suggested for advanced users who have a solid understanding of each mode, and how their Logix programs are structured. To that end, continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this blog post will break down each of these protocol modes, while exploring their benefits and drawbacks, to provide you a clear understanding of each protocol. This post will provide the advanced knowledge needed in a usable way to best serve your own project!

If you're a TOP Server for AVEVA (formerly Wonderware) user, you've certainly connected to a device configured in TOP Server using the included OPC Quick Client at one time or another. But if you've just been launching the Quick Client from the TOP Server toolbar, you may be missing some very useful features.

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this blog post covers five tips you can use to get the most out of your experience using the OPC Quick Client with TOP Server and other OPC DA servers.

If you're a TOP Server for AVEVA (formerly Wonderware) user, you've certainly connected to a device configured in TOP Server using a topic name. But did you know you can create custom topics called aliases with any meaningful name you would like to represent your devices?

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this blog post covers how to easily add define meaningful aliases for your devices in TOP Server for use as topics in your client applications.