By Manny Mandrusiak, OPC FoundationThe beginning of a new year often marks a plethora of articles, television specials, and videos reflecting on the past twelve months. Learning from the past is never a bad thing, but I personally prefer to look forward at the beginning of a new year. In the spirit of being “future facing,” the OPC Foundation has issued the schedule for its 2010 Training Road Shows.
The full schedule of OPC Road Shows can be viewed at www.opcfoundation.org . The OPC Foundation Road Shows have a long history of bringing industrial and process professionals together in a convenient forum that enables them to “meet, learn, and speak” with OPC technology experts.
The 2010 Training Series has been completely revamped to focus on providing technology overviews on the three core parts of the OPC Foundation portfolio: OPC Classic (OPC DA, OPC HDA, OPC A&E), OPC Xi, and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).The reason for the focus on the core technologies is to clearly present to end-users an explanation of the different OPC specifications and educate them on which flavor of OPC best suits their respective needs. Not all end-users are created equally, and OPC has taken on many flavors over the past few years, and these Road Shows will clearly illustrate which OPC is the right choice for every project.
An individual working with a legacy system, or working in C/C++ may have the need to explore OPC Classic products and specifications because of project demands. There is an extensive library of OPC Classic products from a multitude of vendors; as well as well documented case studies to illustrate the versatility and robustness of OPC Classic. Users of OPC Classic will have to contend with COM/DCOM, or use bolt on products which circumvent DCOM.OPC Xi is a new addition to the OPC Foundation portfolio, and will be a topic of great interest of attendees of the 2010 Road Show series.
OPC Xi was produced as the result of collaboration of several OPC Foundation vendor companies to develop an easily integrated and secure OPC solution that provides a .Net migration path from OPC Classic. A more comprehensive explanation of OPC Xi technology will be explored at the Road Shows including the examination of real world OPC Xi application stories.Those individuals who have been eagerly looking toward the future of OPC technology will be treated to an entire afternoon of tracks dedicated to the next generation of OPC technology – OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). OPC UA is based on the functionality of all the OPC Classic Specifications (OPC DA, OPC A&E, Commands, and Complex Data.
OPC Unified Architecture is designed to be platform independent, scalable, secure, and provide high performance.
Application stories use cases, and real-world examples will all be explored by Tom Burke, President of the OPC Foundation.The OPC Foundation Road Shows will be visiting the following cities in 2010:February 24 Houston, TXApril 28 Santa Clara, CAMay 19 Portland, ORJune 22 Minneapolis, MNOctober 20 Boston, MANovember 2 Atlanta, GARegister for any of these events at the following link: www.opcfoundation.org/Events/Events.aspx?CN=COM&CI=495 Along with experts from the OPC Foundation, representatives from the following vendor sponsors will be in attendance at every seminar: ABB, Canary Labs, Control Microsystems, Cyberlogic, ICONICS, ILS Technology, Inductive Automation, Indusoft, Kepware, MatrikonOPC, Mobiform, OSIsoft, Softing, and Software Toolbox.
There is no other event held in 2010 which will provide end-users, integrators, and industry professionals with the opportunity to interact with companies of this caliber all in a no-cost one-day format.As 2010 unfolds, there is no doubt that technology will continue to evolve and provide new ways of enhancing data collection, and the OPC Foundation will remain on the forefront leading the way for total interoperability for end-users.