Introduction

The OpcCmd utility is a program that allows performing various OPC operations from the command line. Among other uses, it can act as

• an OPC DA and OPC XML-DA client,
• an OPC A&E client,
• a generic OPC UA client,
• a specialized OPC UA client for:
  • file transfer,
  • PubSub configuration,
  • security key service (SKS),
• a generic OPC UA PubSub subscriber,
• an OPC UA PubSub Sniffer,
• a tool for OPC UA application management (including GDS registration and certificate manager operations).

OpcCmd can be used for evaluation, experiments, and testing.

OpcCmd is a console application, running on .NET. It is available for .NET Framework (Windows only), or .NET Core (Windows or Linux). The OpcCmd utility is provided free of charge.

Installation

If you have installed QuickOPC (version 2019.2 or later) using its Setup program, and have not excluded the Tools setup component, the OpcCmd utility is already installed on your computer, under the Bin subfolder of the QuickOPC installation folder. There are also shortcuts to it from the Start menu and the Launcher program. In other cases, for stand-alone installation, and for the latest version of the tool, see Tool Downloads.

On Linux, the TGZ file can be extracted using tar -xvzf <filename>.

If you want to use OPC UA PubSub Ethernet transport protocol mapping, you will also need

• on Linux: libpcap (also see https://www.tcpdump.org/)
• on Windows: Npcap (formerly WinPcap)

See also: OPC UA PubSub Common Traps And Pitfalls

Technical Support

For technical support, use the corresponding category on our Online Forums.

Usage

In order to run the OpcCmd utility, open a command prompt, and switch to the directory that contains the program. You start the program and give it a command and additional parameters (options).

• If you are using the .NET Framework version, or .NET Core 3.1 or later version on Windows, type OpcCmd, followed by the commands and options, and press Enter.
• If you are not on Windows, or are using the .NET Core 2.1 version, type dotnet OpcCmd.dll, followed by the commands and options, and press Enter.

In the text that follows, when discussing the command line options, we will be listing the commands simply with the OpcCmd at the beginning; remember to use dotnet OpcCmd.dll in .NET Core instead.

Commands, Arguments and Options

OpcCmd has a concept of (possibly nested) commands and their arguments and options. The command names are case insensitive.

OpcCmd also supports parsing of response files. Arguments beginning with '@' are treated as a file path to a response file. A response file contains additional arguments that will be treated as if they were passed in on the command line.