Chapter 8 Servers
© National Instruments Corporation 8-5 BridgeVIEW User Manual
Browser utility. You can remove these servers from the server list by
selecting the Unregister Server option in the Server Browser utility.
How Do You Use OPC Servers with BridgeVIEW?BridgeVIEW can communicate with any server implementing the OPC
Foundation OPC Server interface, a Microsoft COM-based standard.
BridgeVIEW automatically finds all OPC Servers installed in your system
and searches the network for OPC servers on other machines. Unlike
Device Servers, OPC Servers do not store information in the Common
Configuration Database, rather BridgeVIEW reads any available
information about server capabilities and items from the server directly.
OPC Servers are listed in the Server Name List when you configure
a BridgeVIEW tag using the Tag Configuration Editor. To connect a
BridgeVIEW tag to an OPC Server item, you select the server and enter
or choose the item name along with other parameters you might need to
specify, such as the access path. You also create I/O Groups for the items,
specifying update rate and deadband information for each group. Each
BridgeVIEW I/O Group created in the Tag Configuration Editor is
automatically mapped to an OPC Group in the OPC Server with the
same attributes.
OPC Servers have an optional interface called the Server Browse Address
Space Interface. If a server supports this interface, BridgeVIEW can query
it to find which items are available from the server and display them in the
item list when the server is selected in the Tag Configuration dialog box.
In this case, the Browse button in the Tag Configuration dialog box is
enabled, and you can press this button to view the hierarchical
organization of the server Item IDs.
You can also view the OPC Server Items and their attributes using
the Server Browser utility. Launch the Server Browser by selecting
Projects»Server Tools»Server Browser… or pressing the Server
Browser… button on the Engine Manager display.