Operating Instructions

Chapter 1 – About OPC and the OPC Data Manager
Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. 9
Chapter 1 – About OPC and the OPC Data Manager
Chapter 1 contains the following topics:
• What is OPC?
• What is the OPC Data Manager?
• Licensing Information
• Minimum System Requirements
What is OPC?
Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) for Process Control is an open standard designed to enable
communication between Windows-based applications and process control hardware. Previously, custom
interfaces had to be written for every device. Those custom interfaces made it difficult to write programs
that worked with each interface.
An OPC server uses an OPC compliant interface to access data from process control systems, such as
DDC. Many business, SCADA, MMI, and custom software packages can use an OPC server because of
its standard interface.
OPC servers use Microsoft’s OLE technology, also known as the Common Object Model (COM), to
communicate with OPC clients. An OPC client is any application that can connect to and use data from
an OPC server. Using COM, an OPC server and an OPC client can exchange information in real-time.
Figure 1. Communication Flow Between OPC Clients, OPC Servers, and Devices
Although OPC is sufficient for transmitting data between a server and a client, standard OPC cannot
enable data transfer from one OPC server to another, or from one OPC client to another. The OPC Data
Manager (OPC Client Solution for Insight software) is designed to overcome the data transfer limitations
of standard OPC.
What is the OPC Data Manager?
The OPC Data Manager is an OPC client that can link OPC compliant servers and clients, and enable data
transmission between any of those servers and clients. Using the OPC Data Manager, the Insight
workstation can serve as the central graphical user interface for any number of third-party systems that
support OPC servers.