Interoperability Workshop 2005 - Tampa

Event

The OPC Foundation is organizing an OPC Interoperability Workshop in Tampa Florida, USA.

This workshop will  run from Noon on Monday, April 25th, 2005 through Noon on Friday, April 29th, 2005.

All OPC Foundation members are once again encouraged to use this upcoming test session as not only a mechanism to validate their products, but to also debug and diagnose any interoperability problems that may be discovered. This year's session will allow up to a maximum qty (50) vendors to validate Data Access (V1, V2 and V3) interoperability, XML-DA, Alarms and Events and Historical Data Access.

The purpose of this workshop is to make sure that our OPC products work together. We want to validate interoperability for all required interfaces and functions, as well as validate interoperability for any optional interfaces where practical. We will document interoperability issues that occur for purposes of adding clarity to the OPC specifications. You should plan on helping to debug issues that occur, and be prepared to modify your software components if required. We will be testing primarily for successful operation between clients and servers but will test for failure as time permits. Please plan on attending all days of the workshop if possible.

Registration ( online) for this workshop is now possible.

This year participation will cost $200 until March 31, then $ 300 per person.  The money is used to fund the logistics for the event including the meeting room, daily meals, and the OPC Foundation INTEROPERABILITY dinner event.   Remaining money (if any) is used for maintenance/ enhancement of the OPC compliance tools.

If you wish to attend, please go to the following website to register your contact data and – on a second page - the applications you are going to test.

We look forward to your participation.

You will be required to bring a computer (notebooks preferred due to tabletop space limitations). We will provide room and network (10BaseT). See also the more detailed workshop guidelines. If you will be testing an OPC server then you must either provide simulated data or real data acquired from a device.

Facility

The location of the IOP test facility is:

Doubletree Hotel Tampa Westshore Airport
4500 West Cypress Street
Tampa, FL 33607 
Tel: +1-813-879-4800 
Fax: +1-813-873-1832

Detailed directions can be found at: http://doubletree.hilton.com/en/dt/hotels/maps_directions.jhtml?ctyhocn=TPATLDT#localmap

Hotels

Attendees are responsible for making their own travel and hotel reservations.

All rooms reserved by the OPC Foundation at the Doubletree have been taken.

Other hotels in the vicinity of the Doubletree include: 

Embassy Suites + 1 813 875-1555 
Hampton Inn + 1 813 287-0778 
Hilton Airport + 1 813 877-6688 
La Quinta + 1 813 287-0440

Please contact Lynne Froehlich at the OPC Foundation office, mailto:lynne.froehlich@opcfoundation.org, for further assistance.

Agenda

Day	Agenda
1	Start at 13:00 (01:00 p.m.)             Network and Computer Setup             DCOM Configuration             Verify connectivity.
2-4	08:30 – 17:30             General Testing
5	Wrap-up Generate final databases Finish at Noon

The workshop will start on Monday,  April 25th, 2005, 13:00 (01:00PM).

Day 1:

We will start with network configuration, followed by DCOM configuration. This will be done step-by-step with on-screen instructions. After successful configuration all PCs will be part of the domain. A "share" partition on the domain server can be used to exchange files if necessary.

For the rest of the day we will introduce you with the infrastructure and the test procedure:

• All Servers have to be specified by means of a Web-based entry-form (ProgID, general properties, supported optional interfaces, supported ItemIDs /Conditions, …). These data will go into the test database and will be available for the clients as test data.
• Clients will also use Web-based entry-forms to find available servers, view their properties, select them for testing, fill in test results, etc.

Day 2-4:

These three days will be available for general testing. Every client has to perform an IOP test with every server of different vendors. Web-based forms will show the status with respect to available servers and clients.

From past experience we estimate an average of one hour for each test combination.

Each client vendor has to enter the test results for each tested server into the database (web-based again). The database will be available to all participants at the end of the workshop.

Some of us will be available to help resolve general problems (DCOM, network, specification ambiguities, …).

Day 5:

The last day will be mainly for final discussions, wrapping up the results, completing the database with all results and making the results available to you. The workshop will end by noon.