Softing Releases an Enhanced Version of its industry-leading Modbus/TCP OPC Server

Softing, the world leader in providing conformant OPC development toolkits and OPC Servers for industrial automation applications, has announced the availability of a new version of its exceptional, yet economical Modbus/TCP OPC Server that has been enhanced to provide maximum data throughput, exemplary data security, and to save time and effort during commissioning.

The versatile OPC Server V2.1 has the capability to run simultaneously as a Modbus Client and Modbus Server and facilitates an uncomplicated access to Modbus input and output registers as well as to coils. Softing's Modbus/TCP OPC Server is a dedicated and lean application that does not bear the common disadvantages of multi-driver/multi-purpose OPC Servers.

As an additional benefit, every Modbus/TCP OPC Server includes

• an OPC ActiveX client control with examples on how to create small HMI applications using Excel, Internet Explorer, or Visual Basic,
• a server-side OPC Tunnel (part of Softing's award-winning Easy Connect Suite), and
• support for Modbus/TCP to serial RTU/ASCII Gateways

There are five significant characteristics that identify any outstanding OPC Server.

• High-Performance: Softing's Modbus/TCP OPC Server benefits from Softing's unique and proprietary algorithm to optimize the data throughput between the OPC Server and the Modbus/TCP devices by automatically re-combining Modbus/TCP Read and Write Requests for optimal performance.
• Robustness: For each Modbus connection, Softing's OPC Server automatically generates an OPC-System-Item called "Connected." This unique OPC item holds information about the state of connection to a specific Modbus device and is essential in developing robust applications.
• Ease-of-use: The professional and intuitive user interface is designed to speed-up the commissioning phase. Optionally, the OPC configuration offers a feature to import configuration information directly from Excel. The configurator encourages the use of tag names (symbolic names) to clearly and user-friendly associate OPC items with process values.
  Furthermore, the included OPC configurator includes features to shorten the commissioning-time by
  • offering a test feature to immediately check a new Modbus-connection with one click of the mouse
  • starting the included Softing OPC test client any time during the commissioning phase to test the current configuration.
• Data Security: The OPC Server V2.1 includes an optional and configurable user authentication service. This feature helps to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access by requiring a username and password if a connection request is received from a remote computer.
• Integrated Diagnostics: The OPC Server includes an integrated web server that is capable of displaying within any standard web browser
  • OPC diagnostic information
  • process data
  • maintenance information.