General question about connector

[Former Member]

Dear experts,

We are preparing for a project which involves multiple different MES/SCADA/PCL systems. Some systems have OPC servers connected to them, according to the Menu, xMII could connect to them via UDS. Others have "I/O server" or "I/O device" (quote from customer) connected to them. I am pretty new to this field, could anyone tell me what is the I/O server, and xMII be albe to connect to them? Or do we have to replace these I/O servers with OPC servers?

Many thanks

Yiming.

[agentry_src]

You are correct. You should be able to go through UDS to get to the OPC data. Some MES systems are based on an SQL Server or Oracle database, so you could make a connector directly to the database. Some have standard webservice calls defined so you could get data through a webservice call or http:// post. Many of your PLC/SCADA devices connect to and store data in a data historian from which you can define a connector using UDS Admin. Please provide more data on the sources of the data you are trying to access.

Thanks,

Mike

[Former Member]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your input. If we have to replace these I/O servers with OPC servers. Do we need to purchase different OPC servers for different vendors' hardware? Or there is a common OPC server which supports multiple vendors' hardware?

Thanks,

Yiming.

[Former Member]

Hi Yiming,

Go through the document at [this location|http://www.matrikonopc.com/training/opc-multimedia-tutorial/opc_tutorial_printable_version.pdf],

this will give you rough idea how OPC server works with different devices.

Hope this helps ,

Rupesh

[agentry_src]

Hi Yiming,

You will need to get that answer from somewhere else. I have not set up a data historian, only accessed the data contained by them. But I am sure that between the link Rupesh showed you, Google, and contacting Matrikon/OPC you can get the answer you desire.

Good luck,

Mike

[Former Member]

Do the "I/O servers/devices" have IP addresses? You'll probably need to feed the I/O signals into an OPC Collector or Server. Then connect MII to the OPC server.