What's new in QuickOPC 2020.3

See also: Versions; Previous version: What's new in QuickOPC 2020.2

Internal version number: 5.59

Key changes:

• Usability improvements

Licensing

• Improved the licensing error messages. Besides more precise wording, the typical messages now contain the list of (serial numbers of) licenses that were considered but dropped, together with their "release date covered" field, which is frequently the cause for the license not being recognized.
• Added text to License Manager dialog, explaining that licenses with Active status are not necessarily valid, depending on the particular combination of the component and environment status, and that the capabilities of the component itself should be used to check the license validity.

Component Improvements

• Added HasServerTimestamp and HasSourceTimestamp properties to the UADataValue class (and therefore, also to the derived UAAttributeData and UADataSetFieldData classes). These properties determine whether there is a (non-default) server or source timestamp in the data value.
• Factored out base UADataSetHeader class from the UADataSetData class. The UADataSetHeader can be used e.g. to distinguish dataset data that represent different datasets.
• Added HasConfigurationVersion and HasTimestamp properties to the UADataSetHeader class.
• Added MajorVersionDateTimeLocal and MinorVersionDateTimeLocal properties to the UAConfigurationVersion class.
• Added AddRange method to ElasticVector. Among other uses, it can be used in Xojo to convert a keyed collection to an elastic vector, and index its elements by integers, as a workaround for Xojo inability to enumerate the collections using COM interface method GetEnumerator.
• In COM-visible objects, consistently added SetXXXX methods to accompany each property setter whose argument is System.Object. This allows such properties be set from Visual Basic 6.0 with early binding.

Examples

• Retested the Xojo examples with Xojo 2019r3.1.

OPC Classic

• Added larger number of C# examples, showing e.g. how to browse access paths, browse branches, browse leaves, browse properties, browse servers, read item value with specifying server's CLSID, read multiple items "from device", do many reads repeatedly, perform synchronous OPC read, read multiple item values, unsubscribe all or multiple items, write an item (including timestamp and quality), list OPC categories that the server implements, and more.
• Added C# FormsDocExample project, with examples for user interface (showing various browsing dialogs for OPC Classic), and added these C# examples to conceptual&reference documentation.

OPC UA

• Added pair of examples UAWcfService1 and UAWcfClient1 (C#): A simple Web service using WCF technology. Provides a GetData method to read a value of an OPC UA variable. Accompanied by a console-based client code.
• Added example UAWindowsService1 (C#): A Windows Service that subscribes to variables from the OPC UA sample server, and logs their changes into a file.
• Added C# example that shows how to read value of server's NamespaceArray, and display the namespace URIs in it.
• Added C# example that shows how to write an ever-incrementing value to an OPC UA variable.
• Added C# UAFormsDocExample project, with examples for user interface (showing various browsing dialogs for OPC UA), and added these C# examples to conceptual&reference documentation.

Documentation and Help

• Made clear at multiple places that Product Option licenses (such as Excel Option or StreamInsight Option) require base product license first.

COM Components

• Documentation for all COM objects now consistently contains "Object Creation" section, with syntax for object creation in following languages or tools: C++, Free Pascal, JScript, Object Pascal (Delphi), Perl, PHP, PowerScript, Python, REALbasic (Xojo), Visual Basic (VB 6.), Visual FoxPro, VBA, VBScript, Xbase++.
• Added explanation of Xojo programming specific, explaining how to use the ElasticVector for enumeration of keyed collections.