XiOXS Express Interface (Xi / OPC .NET 3.0) Exchange Server

The XiOXS Express Interface (Xi / OPC .NET 3.0) server aggregates multiple OPC DA or OPC Xi servers into the Xi server. The Exchange Server is: a data aggregator a server-to-server data exchange handler an OPC Xi to OPC DA wrapper

The XiOXS Exchange Server handles any number of OPC DA/Xi child servers and any number of items. Configured items are mirrored in the Xi server and can be read and written by the Xi clients. Any number of child server items can be linked to one or multiple items in other child servers. Item value changes are written to all linked items. The configuration application is easy to use and also handles testing and maintenance tasks. Configuration The Exchange Server configures itself at startup from an XML configuration file. This files can be created and modified with the supplied Configuration utility.

Configuration and Diagnostic Utility
The configuration utility creates and modifies the XML configuration files. The OPC DA servers to be handled by the Exchange Server can be browsed and items and branches can be dragged to the Exchange server item tree. Complex configurations can be created in minutes.

 

XiOXS Exchange Server Features

• Aggregating server accessible as an OPC Xi server
• Can run as a Windows service
• High performance data exchange between servers
• Each item can be linked to multiple target servers
• All data types including arrays are supported
• Errors and information is logged in the Windows Event Log
• Test clients and simulation server provided
  

XiOXS Security
The Express Interface (Xi / OPC.NET 3.0) specification was designed with communication security as a main consideration. Management and data read/write operations are handled through different endpoints, which can be separately configured with appropriate communication settings. Xi management methods associate handles with object identifiers and the read/write data methods only communicate handles with the data. This makes data hard to interpret by an eavesdropper even if it's communicated without encryption.
The XiOXS converter requires the management endpoint to be configured for secure communication. This ensures good security without reducing the data exchange performance.

Access control on Object level The Xi interface and WCF security control the access to the server. Clients that are allowed access to the server have access to all objects of the server. The Advosol Xi servers implement an additional security layer. The server configuration can restrict the object access individually for each client. Browsing the server shows only the objects this client is allowed to access. The screen shots on the right show the object structure of the same Xi server for different clients. The server is configured to allow one client access to all objects but to allow other clients only read access to a few objects. The clients are identified by either the Windows user name or by a X509 certificate. Access can further be restricted to a particular client IPC address. The access rights can be restricted to e.g. deny write access, deny access to a set of object or allow access to only a configured set of objects. The XiConfig utility provided with the Advosol Xi servers makes the server configuration simple. All configuration and security settings can be made with this one utility. XiConfig also supports the creation and management of X509 certificates. Object access restrictions can be interactively edited. The Xi server can be browsed and dragged to a list of objects that are either allowed or blocked for particular clients. The configuration is stored in an XML file that is processed by the server at startup.	Client with full access rights	Client with read-only access to an object subset.

XiOXS as a Tunneler Solution
XiOXS used in combination with the OXS Exchange Server converts OPC DA to Xi and back to OPC DA. Remote OPC DA servers can be accessed through an Xi WCF connection.
The Xi communication has significant advantages over Tunneler products:

• The communication can be configured to a security level appropriate for the application
• TCP or HTTP communication can be chosen.
  TCP communication offers high performance but requires firewall configuration.
  HTTP communication on standard ports works without configuration efforts.
• The standardized Xi / OPC .NET 3.0 communication interface is used instead of a proprietary Tunneler interface.
  Either side converter can easily be replaced with any Xi client respectively server.
• Can act as a security gateway to restrict object access based on the client credentials.
  

Related Products

The Advosol OXS Exchange Server offers the same functionality in the opposite direction. It works in as OPC DA server.

Requirements
	Windows XP or newer
	.NET 3.5 or 4.0
	PNRP for Xi server discovery (optional)

Program OPC Historical Data Access .NET clients in .NET without the hassle of COM interoperability. The OPCHDA.NET wrapper assembly provides classes and methods that take advantage of the .NET features and make OPC HDA Server access real simple and quick.
The supplied charting .Net library supports all kinds of bar, line and pie charts.