I was in Miami recently attending an OPC Foundation Board of Directors’ meeting.  I don’t usually talk about what goes on at those, but this one is well worth my ramblings.  Some of you out there may have heard about a new interface based on Microsoft .NET, the Express Interface (Xi).  

The Board of Directors has sanctioned the creation of a Task Force of board member representatives to create a plan for including Xi as part of the OPC Foundation umbrella. The OPC Foundation recognized the desire for some vendors to migrate their existing COM-based OPC applications to a solution based on the latest Microsoft Windows platforms.  Much the same way the OPC Foundation provided the OPC Automation interfaces and .NET SDK toolkit for classic OPC, we recognized something similar was needed based on Microsoft’s WCF technology.  The Xi interfaces meet that need.  The Xi interface was developed by a group of product companies to develop simple, secure communications based on Microsoft’s latest .NET and WCF technologies.  Since Microsoft is migrating from COM to .NET based applications, a .NET-based replacement was needed for existing applications. Xi was developed to provide a .NET-based migration path from some COM-based systems. Xi is based on MMS (Manufacturing Messaging Service), Microsoft .NET 3.5 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Feedback from some members of the OPC community was that there was a desire for a Microsoft-centric replacement for DCOM based applications to provide the same level of functionality as that provided by existing classic OPC solutions.  Just as our classic OPC specifications, automation wrappers and OPC XML DA offerings met a specific need, Xi fills a requirement for those members.  Of course all these offerings have migration paths to ensure interoperability with cross-platform OPC UA based enterprise wide solutions. We want to provide the right options to ensure successful the adoption of all OPC technology, while being sure that full interoperability is maintained.  The newly sanctioned Task Force will assure that any wrappers and proxies necessary to maintain the security, reliability and interoperability with the suite of OPC products are available.

Look for more ramblings on Xi as this moves forward.