1. Putting OPC to Work: OSIsoft’s OPC Architecture
Ray Verhoeff VP Research

2. Agenda The Interfacing Problem What is OPC? OSIsoft’s OPC architecture
Current products
What will OPC do next?
How will OSIsoft respond?
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

3. The Interfacing Problem
Application
Application
Application
Vendor “A” API & Network Library
Vendor “B” API & Network Library
Vendor “C” API & Network Library
Talk about vendors offering access to their features using proprietary routines, usually in libraries. This application can be doing anything. The point is that a vendor providing a feature to several data sources has to implement this feature different ways for each vendor. This is what OSIsoft has done with its interfaces. This isn’t necessarily bad. Each vendor is able to fully expose the features of its data source. It just restricts interoperability.
Slide on DLLs is next: don’t mention here.
<Diagram with different vendor libraries linked with different interface code>
Vendor “A” Server
Vendor “B” Server
Vendor “C” Server
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

4. Windows DLLs Simple: code library with named subroutines
Vendors shipped their Windows libraries as DLLs
version independence
Allowed update of application without relinking
Vendors shipping libraries on Windows implemented them as Windows DLLs.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

5. Windows DLLs DLL subroutine names and semantics remained proprietary
No one suggested developing an industry-standard set of subroutines for accessing industrial data
Even when DLLs came into being, there was no movement to create standard routines to make interoperability possible.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

6. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

7. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
Library A
Library B
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

8. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
“ODBC == Ray Verhoeff”
At the risk of digressing, does anyone remember this statement?
Goes back to PI ODBC driver and ProcessBook ODBC Data Sets released the same year. I wrote PI ODBC and helped design the ODBC data sets. For a long time, I was asked to explain ODBC to people. All tech support issues with ODBC in them would eventually reach me. If ODBC ever got mentioned, my name was sure to follow. I spent a lot of time on the phone with you learning about the kinds of ODBC applications you were dealing with. And you know what? I kind of enjoyed it.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

9. ODBC Successes Abstracted access to relational databases
Allowed database vendors to leverage their existing programming & network APIs
Enable client application vendors to broaden the databases they support
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

10. ODBC Failures Subtle differences in SQL implementations
“Spaghetti” connections
All clients connect directly to all servers
Vendor’s API libraries still need to be deployed on all workstations
Difficult upgrades
Troubleshooting often means visiting the workstation
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

11. History of COM OLE first released by Microsoft in 1991
Organized routines into groups called Interfaces and gave them unique identifiers
If a object “exposed” an interface, it was required to support all routines in it
Facilities for browsing available Interfaces
Intuitive support for COM in Visual Basic
That story was about DLLs as a means of standardizing access to data. Let’s move on.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

12. History of OPC
Industry realized it could continue to create proprietary interfaces OR work together
OPC Foundation created in 1996
First standard, OPC DA, released in August 1996
Add slide on what OLE methods and interfaces are after this one.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

13. OPC Interfaces DA HDA A&E Command Execution Batch Data Access
Historical Data Access
A&E
Alarms and Events
Command Execution
Batch
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

14. Vendor API & Network Library
OPC Interface Model
OPC COM
Vendor API & Network Library
Foreign Server
diagram of OPC object layer on top of vendor library, communicating with server
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

15. OPC Deployment Foreign Server 1 Foreign Server 2
diagram of several workstations, each with OPC object and vendor library installed
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

16. OPC Access in OSIsoft Clients
This is not our architecture
We want to help you avoid the workstation management problem
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

17. OSIsoft architecture Centralize!
Install OPC Server and vendor libraries on PI Interface node or PI Server
Keeps deployment, management and troubleshooting in one place
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

18. OSIsoft OPC Interface PI Interface Node PI Server Foreign Server
PI OPC HDA Interface
Vendor OPC Server
Interface Buffer
PI Server
Diagram of API node with OPC interface talking to PI Server
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

19. OSIsoft OPC HDA COM Connector
PI Server
Foreign Server
Basess
Redirector
NetMgr
Snapss
Vendor OPC Server
Archss
With either of these solutions, all PI client and server applications are able to access OPC data.
<Diagram of PI Server with COM Connector and OPC installed>
PI Clients
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

20. OPC Interface in the High-Availability Environment
PI Server
PI Interface Node
Failover Coordination
Shared Configuration
PI Server
<Diagram of two 2-way OPC interfaces sending data to redundant servers>
PI Interface Node
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

21. OPC COM Connector in the High-Availability Environment
PI Server
PI Clients
Foreign Server
PI SDK
Shared Configuration
PI Server
<Replicated PI Servers. Since configurations are mirrored, each Server therefore has OPC COM Connector installed>
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

22. OPC Point Configuration Simplified
Auto-Point Sync
Builds correctly configured points in PI if the “foreign system” exposes its configuration
Available for OPC if “Browse” interface exposed
APS Connector for the OPC Interface
APS Connector for the OPC HDA COM Connector
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

23. OPC Security No formal security model DCOM
Implementations use Windows security or proprietary implementation
DCOM
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

24. Vendor OPC Server Proxy
DCOM
Application
Vendor OPC Server Proxy
Vendor OPC Server
<Diagram of proxy stub talking over network to “real” OPC object on another node>
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

25. DCOM Based on Windows RPC Did not perform particularly well
Replaced vendor networking with Microsoft’s
Difficult to configure
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

26. DCOM Deliberately disabled in Windows XP SP2, not removed
Microsoft KB article on how to restore it: “How to Troubleshoot WMI-related issues in Windows XP SP2”
Probably safe within a LAN
Some sites use “Tunnels” for DCOM over TCP/IP
But “stateful” firewalls cannot track traffic
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

27. OSIsoft OPC Servers OSIsoft OPC DA Server OSIsoft OPC HDA Server
Shows that we can’t just take it, we can dish it out.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

28. What OPC is doing next OPC UA Embraces Microsoft .NET, Indigo
Universal Architecture
Embraces Microsoft .NET, Indigo
Exploits Web Services
Non-Microsoft Server implementations possible
Final spec due in August
OPC Foundation hopes for commercial products in 2007
Possible Indigo.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

29. OPC UA Topics Address Space Relationships Service Sets Profiles
Transport
Security
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

30. OPC UA Address Space
“Set of objects and relationships exposed by an OPC UA Server”
Nodes:
Have Attributes, which have values
Minimum:
Node name
Node type
Node id
All objects are nodes, not all nodes are objects
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

31. OPC UA Relationships All Nodes exist at least in a hierarchy
Nodes may have references to each other
Allows rendering of network relationships
Server may show subsets called Views
Views are also hierarchies
Client can browse available Views
Default View is entire hierarchy
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

32. OPC UA Service Sets Available services are grouped: Server Node
CreateSession, CloseSession, GetSecurityPolicies
Node
AddNode, AddReference, DeleteNode, DeleteReference
Attribute
Read, HistoryRead, Write, HistoryUpdate
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

33. OPC UA Profiles Client can obtain from Server exact features supported
Profiles define:
Security model
Support for levels of DA, HDA, A&E
Transport
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

34. OPC UA Transport Actual transport not specified by OPC
Transport Profiles:
SOAP or TCP/IP
Payload Profiles:
XML or Binary
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

35. OPC UA Security Client and Server hold X.509 v3 Certificates
How they are obtained is not defined by UA
GetSecurityPolicies to exchange certificates
RequestSecurityToken to create secure session
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

36. OPC UA Security Requirements authentication integrity confidentiality
authorization
non-repudiation
availability
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

37. OPC UA Security Threat Types
Message flooding
Eavesdropping
Message spoofing
Message alteration
Message replay
Malformed messages
Server profiling
Session hijacking
Rogue Client or Server
Compromising user credentials
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

38. OSIsoft and OPC UA
Use OPC Foundation “wrapper” to support COM-based OPC Interface against third-party OPC UA Servers in 2006
Native OPC UA Interface committed
OSIsoft OPC UA Server in 2007
Will expose Foundation data model
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

39. OSIsoft HA Platform Release
OPC Interface failover
N-way interface buffering
Supports Phase 1 PI Server Replication
OPC HDA COM Connector configurations will replicate in Phase 1
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

40. OSIsoft Futures
Standards-based access techniques will become first-class connection methods
PI OPC UA Server
PI OLE DB
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

41. OSIsoft Futures
RtPM client connectivity will migrate to Platform Release 3 Data Access
“Foundation” Data Access
RtBaseline Services will evolve to support data access by clients
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

42. Summary
OPC abstracts Servers allowing for common clients, still leveraging vendor networking
Vendor libraries need to be installed on clients
OSIsoft has centralized OPC usage:
PI Interface node
PI Server
Architecture scales on the OSIsoft High-Availability platform
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

43. Summary OSIsoft active in OPC UA
We will keep deployments centralized, but Highly-Available
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.

44. OSISoft OPC Team Ayana Craven Les Daley Mike Grace Alisher Maksumov
Melanie Moore
Butch Payne
Andy Singh
Pam Sluder
<acknowledge hard work in development & on committees, tech support>
Active in OPC commitees and work groups, development, document, test and do tech support.
Copyright © 2006 OSIsoft, Inc. Company Confidential. All rights reserved.