Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Cogent DataHub® is a gateway that enables a wide range of connectivity interfaces for different data sources such as OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  Included in those available interfaces is the ability to act as both an MQTT client and broker even including Sparkplug B support for enabling MQTT integration with many other types of systems that don't natively support MQTT.

A key facet of the MQTT specification that can sometimes be complex for our users and cause issues with compatibility between DataHub and other MQTT clients and brokers is how to handle the formatting of MQTT messages. As you may or may not know, while MQTT does specify how to construct a message header for routing by an MQTT broker, it does NOT specify the actual message content. This tends to be a challenge when MQTT clients from different developers need to work together, since they need to be using the same format for the message content.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to use DataHub V10's Advanced MQTT Parser capability to specify flexible formats that will work with virtually any other vendor's MQTT clients and brokers.

If you're reading this, you likely have at least one Siemens S7 PLC on your network being used in your industrial process and need to integrate data from that process. And, like many of our Siemens users, you're likely interested in accessing symbolic references (versus the traditional Siemens variable addresses) supported by newer S7 controllers.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our Siemens S7 Plus Ethernet driver (part of the Siemens S7 Plus Suite) to connect and gather real-time process data from Siemens S7-1500 and S7-1200 PLC symbolic variables/tagnames for AVEVA Wonderware applications.

Cogent DataHub enables a wide range of connectivity interfaces for different data sources such as OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  This makes DataHub a flexible gateway commonly used for data integration by external software such as HMI, SCADA, MES, historians and other client applications.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to use DataHub V10's support for OPC UA Alarms & Conditions to enable OPC Classic Alarms & Events servers to work with newer OPC UA clients supporting Alarms & Conditions.

OmniServer's connectivity and data parsing capabilities are its primary job; however, they are only part of how OmniServer helps with integrating non-standard devices with Inductive Automation's Ignition HMI/SCADA.  How does the device data actually make it into Ignition and what devices can you connect Ignition to using OmniServer?

In this video blog, I'll show you how to use OmniServer for TPI to integrate vibration data into Ignition via an OPC UA client connection from Ignition to OmniServer - all without the expense and headaches of having to write custom code.

With OPC DA Classic having been the de-facto standard for integrating industrial automation systems for so many years, I'm sure there are quite a few of you who might have custom developed OPC DA servers using SLIK-DA. Now, of course, migrations to OPC UA are on the rise with its enhanced security, encryption and efficiency.

Of course, the prospect of replacing that OPC DA server entirely with a replacement that supports OPC UA might be less than ideal. But have you considered adding an OPC UA server interface to that existing OPC DA custom application?

In this video blog, we teach you how to add an OPC UA Server interface to your existing OPC DA Server interface using the SLIK-DA/UA rapid development toolkit with your custom software application (NO ADDITIONAL CODE). If you missed our last post on how to add an OPC DA interface to your custom software, click here.

So your organization has a custom developed application that is performing some important task and you've been tasked with providing access to that software for an OPC DA client or clients. Adding an OPC DA server interface to a custom application that either you've developed or that you've taken over from someone else can be a daunting task.  This is especially true if you're unfamiliar with the low level nuts and bolts of the OPC DA Classic specification.

In this video blog, we teach you how to add an OPC DA Server interface to your custom software application using the SLIK-DA/UA rapid development toolkit.

An often important task when logging important process data to a database or even to the cloud is verification that the data has been logged. This ensures that data has been successfully logged and will not be lost when overwritten in the downstream process.

In this video blog, we'll step through the configuration required in the OPC Data Logger for logging important process data to a database on condition related to a monitored item and how to perform a writeback to the OPC data source confirming the data has been successfully logged.

With the advent of cloud-based solutions in every industry, it's only natural that you might need to migrate from a traditional locally-hosted SQL database for logging your process data to Azure. Fortunately, logging both to traditional SQL and Azure SQL are similar in many ways and OPC Data Logger makes it possible to log to both for OPC UA and DA data sources.

In this video blog, we'll review the basic setup and architecture for OPC Data Logger and then step through the configuration required for logging to SQL and Azure SQL from an OPC server.