ole for process control (opc), which stands for object linking and embedding (ole) for process control, is the original name for a standards specification developed in 1996 by an industrial automation industry task force. the standard specifies the communication of real-time plant data between control devices from different manufacturers. as of november 2011, the opc foundation has officially renamed the acronym to mean "open platform communications" although they also use the tagline "open productivity & connectivity" on their website.http://www.opcfoundation.org/default.aspx/01_about/01_whatis.asp the change in name reflects the applications of opc technology for applications in process control, discrete manufacturing, building automation, and many others. opc has also grown beyond its original ole (object linking and embedding) implementation to include other data transportation technologies including xml, microsoft's .net framework, and even the opc foundation's binary-encoded tcp format. after the initial release in 1996, the opc foundation was created to maintain the standard. since then, standards have been added and names have been changed. as of june, 2006, "opc is a series of standards specifications". (seven current standards and two emerging standards.) "the first standard (originally called simply the opc specification"), is "now called the data access specification", or (later on the same page) "opc data access", or opc data access specification.what is opc? opcfoundation.org ==origin and uses== the opc specification was based on the ole, com, and dcom technologies developed by microsoft for the microsoft windows operating system family. the specification defined a standard set of objects, interfaces and methods for use in process control and manufacturing automation applications to facilitate interoperability. the most common opc specification is opc data access, which is used to read and write real-time data. when vendors refer to opc generically, they typically mean opc data access (opc da). opc da itself has gone through 3 major revisions since its inception. versions are backwards compatible, in that a version 3 opc server can still be accessed by a version 1 opc client, since the specifications add functionality but still require the older version to be implemented as well. however, a client could be written that does not support the older functions since everything can be done using the newer ones, s
Application_programming_interfaces Automation Computer_standards