XiToXML Express Interface (Xi / OPC .NET 3.0) To XML DA Wrapper Server

The XiToXML converter server makes one XML DA server accessible from Express Interface (Xi / OPC .NET 3.0) clients. XML DA servers installed in applications can be accessed from XI clients using the Xi features for secure communication. Usage of the XiToXML converter server is very simple. Usually only the URL of the XML DA server needs to be defined. Optional configuration settings help with specifics of particular XML DA server, e.g. how the XML DA ItemPath is handled.

Xi Security
The Express Interface specification was designed with communication security as a main consideration. Management and data read/write operations are handled through different endpoints, which can be separately configured with appropriate communication settings. Xi management methods associate handles with object identifiers and the read/write data methods only communicate handles with the data. This makes data hard to interpret by an eavesdropper even if it's communicated without encryption.
Xi requires only the management endpoint to be configured for secure communication. This ensures good security without reducing the data exchange performance.

Access control on Object level The Xi interface and WCF security control the access to the server. Clients that are allowed access to the server have access to all objects of the server. The Advosol Xi servers implement an additional security layer. The server configuration can restrict the object access individually for each client. Browsing the server shows only the objects this client is allowed to access. The screen shots on the right show the object structure of the same Xi server for different clients. The server is configured to allow one client access to all objects but to allow other clients only read access to a few objects. The clients are identified by either the Windows user name or by a X509 certificate. Access can further be restricted to a particular client IPC address. The access rights can be restricted to e.g. deny write access, deny access to a set of object or allow access to only a configured set of objects. The XiConfig utility provided with the Advosol Xi servers makes the server configuration simple. All configuration and security settings can be made with this one utility. XiConfig also supports the creation and management of X509 certificates. Object access restrictions can be interactively edited. The Xi server can be browsed and dragged to a list of objects that are either allowed or blocked for particular clients. The configuration is stored in an XML file that is processed by the server at startup.	Client with full access rights	Client with read-only access to an object subset.

OPC DA to XML DA converter

The Advosol XDAGW-CS client-side Gateway can be used to access XML DA servers from OPC DA client applications.

.NET applications can access OPC AE server through a set of conveniant classes and methods. The EventView control handles a wide range of OPC Alarms&Events viewing requirements. OPC Alarms&Events .NET clients can be created without writing code and without knowledge of the OCP AE specification.