With DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) fast becoming obsolete technology (Microsoft superseded DDE with OLE years ago), OPC DA and, more recently, OPC UA data sources have become the primary go-to for process data integration. Recently, Microsoft even disabled certain DDE functionality in MS Office applications due to security concerns and malware exploitation targeting the DDE interface.
But the usefulness of MS Excel for data analysis across many industries even today is still undeniable and the primary mechanism for MS Excel to connect to a data source is via DDE. So what do you do if you're still using MS Excel for process data analysis and reporting via DDE? What's the alternative?
The following short video blog demonstrates step-by-step how to easily read/write data from process data sources (OPC DA and OPC UA Servers) using MS Excel (without DDE) with the Cogent DataHub.
In this video, you will learn how to setup the Cogent DataHub to collect your OPC DA and OPC UA server data and then connect MS Excel with read/write access to your OPC data, all without using DDE.
Just to summarize, in this video, I've shown you:
- How to configure Cogent DataHub for connectivity to:
- OPC DA Servers
- OPC UA Servers
- How toverify good data/quality for OPC DA/UA Server connections.
- How to configure the Skkynet Vine plug-in for Excel to connect to OPC data in Cogent DataHub (either locally or remotely to MS Excel).
- How to define which OPC DA/UA data points are accessed in MS Excel.
- How to read and write to OPC DA/UA data points from MS Excel.
If you're interested in learning more about how to easily read/write OPC data with MS Excel, please contact us to request a trial of the Skkynet Vine plug-in for Excel.
