QuickOPC User's Guide and Reference
Terminology
Introduction > Terminology

QuickOPC is a name for the product as a whole. It can be used from various languages and environments.

Parts of the product can be differentiated by the kind of OPC specifications they deal with. QuickOPC-Classic refers to parts of the product that deal with "Classic" OPC specifications, based on COM/DCOM (or OPC XML). It can be used from COM tools or from .NET. Similarly, the QuickOPC-UA referts to parts of the product that deal with OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) specifications, and it also supports both .NET and COM development targets.

The other way to differentiate the parts of the product is by the principal development technology they are aiming at: Either Microsoft .NET, or Microsoft .COM (so-called OLE Automation). When we need such disctinction, we refer to there product parts as QuickOPC.NET or QuickOPC-COM, respectively. When necessary, the differing text is marked with corresponding COM or .NET icon.

The following table explains the product part names, and how they relate to OPC specifications they cover, and to the development tools platform that can be used with them.

Development Tools/Target Platform: Microsoft .NET and Python Microsoft COM  
OPC Specifications  
OPC “Classic” (DCOM based) OPC Data Access (OPC-DA)

QuickOPC-Classic

QuickOPC.NET

QuickOPC-Classic

QuickOPC-COM

OPC Alarms and Events (OPC-A&E)
OPC XML-DA (XML Data Access)
OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA), for Data Access, Alarms & Conditions

QuickOPC-UA

QuickOPC.NET

QuickOPC-UA

QuickOPC-COM

OPC UA PubSub

QuickOPC-UA

QuickOPC.NET

QuickOPC-UA

QuickOPC-COM

The OPC XML-DA support in QuickOPC.NET is transparently integrated into the component. Wherever this document refers to “OPC Data Access”, it also usually applies to OPC XML-DA.

All products/product parts are delivered in a single installation package.

The main component of QuickOPC is called EasyOPC, and it allows programmatic client access to OPC servers, Other parts of QuickOPC are user interface objects (dialogs and controls), extensions, tools, and so on.

See Also