Working with Software Toolbox (Cogent's Sales and Technical Partner), a major worldwide producer of oil, natural gas, and chemicals has been using the OPC DataHub to develop a flexible and robust data integration project in the giant Mukhaizna oil field in the Sultanate of Oman.

The OPC DataHub was first brought in to optimize an OPC client-server connection, but was soon implemented in a number of other ways--for OPC tunneling, data logging, redundancy, and getting data from a UNIX system. "In all aspects, the OPC DataHub is performing very well," said Mr. Juan Munoz, Project Manager, "and we are very grateful to the support from Software Toolbox on this project."

If for some reason your OPC DataHub does not connect to an OPC server or other data source, there is a handy troubleshooting tool that you can use immediately: the Event Log. Just open the Properties Window and click the Event Log button to open it.

The Event Log records every significant connection event that takes place in the OPC DataHub with a timestamp and brief description. Often you can figure out the problem by reading the log yourself. In some cases you may need to send us an email for a brief explanation. To do so, you can click the Log to file option, and send us the resulting file.

The ConnectionTrack.g DataHub script creates a point that changes according to whether a data connection is working or broken. The script watches the quality on an indicator point and sets an output to 0 if the quality is "Not Connected" and 1 otherwise.

Once the script is running, you can use the output point as a trigger to send email, write to a database, update a PLC, write to Excel or perform some other custom action through scripting.