OPC Servers

An OPC Server is a software application, a “standardized” driver, specifically written to comply with one or more OPC specifications. The word “server” in “OPC Server” does not refer to the type of computer being used but instead reflects its relationship with its OPC counterpart, the OPC Client.

What Do OPC Servers Do?

OPC Servers are connectors that may be thought of as translators between the OPC world and a Data Source’s native communication protocol or interface. Since OPC is bi-directional, this means OPC Servers can both read-from and write-to a Data Source. The OPC Client/OPC Server relationship is a Master/ Slave one which means one OPC Server will only transfer data to/from a Data Source if an OPC Client commands it to.

While many vendors provide OPC Servers with their devices, controllers, and applications, there are many who do not. MatrikonOPC is the world’s largest provider of high-quality, OPC connectors for hundreds of devices. A good place to start is on the MatrikonOPC Server website, or by calling MatrikonOPC directly.

How do OPC Servers work?

While users do not need to know anything about the inner workings of OPC Servers to be able to use them, a conceptual understanding of what goes on under the hood helps shed light on why the quality and performance of different vendors’ OPC Servers vary greatly.

An OPC Server from one vendor can Communicate with OPC Clients from other vendors , assuming both the OPC Client and OPC Server are compliant with the same OPC specifications, they should be capable of communicating with each other regardless of which vendor each OPC component came from but OPC Servers do not communicate directly with each other; they are only designed to communicate with OPC Clients.there exist many OPC Server that work this like OPCHUB,Matrikon,... .

Tunneling

OPC UA are mostly used for bridging between different OPC servers, this is called tunneling.