Benefits of using OPC Connectivity
At first glance, trading a single Custom Driver for two OPC components (OPC Client and OPC Server) may not look like much of an improvement but as experience has shown, it is. Following are some key benefits of using OPC:
1.An OPC enabled Application can freely communicate with any OPC-enabled Data Source visible to it on the network without the need for any driver
software, specific to the Data Source.
2.OPC-enabled applications can communicate with as many OPC-enabled Data Sources as they need. There is no inherent OPC limitation on the
number of connections made.
3.Today OPC is so common that there’s an OPC connector available for almost every modern and legacy device on the market. It’s easy to get started using OPC.
4.OPC-enabled Data Sources may be swapped out, exchanged, or upgraded without the need to update the drivers used by each application (DataSink) communicating with the Data Source via
OPC. Only the OPC Server for that Data Source needs to be kept current.
5. Users are free to choose the best-suited devices, controllers, and applications for their projects without worrying about which vendor each came from and whether they will communicate with each
other… intercommunication is now assumed!