I did a search of the site, and checked through the docs I had, but couldn’t find a definite answer to this. I have a customer with a semi-proprietary DDE driver running under a very old version of Wonderware. We are currently quoting an HMI replacement, and were going to quote FactorySQL/FactoryPMI. The only issue I see is the previously mentioned DDE driver. This driver is the only way to communicate with their control hardware. Will I be able to use this DDE driver with FactorySQL, or am I stuck using another HMI package? Thanks in advance.
FactorySQL doesn’t support DDE- it performs all of its communication though OPC. I’d double check and make sure that no one makes an OPC server for your particular device. After that, there are various DDE-to-OPC converters on the market that you could check out. I did a quick search and found Kepware’s DDE client driver, but there are others as well.
That’s what I thought. Unfortunately, this is an old proprietary system that is basically unsupported now, so I’m stuck with the DDE driver as the only way to interface with it. Looks like I’ll have to use the DDE Client driver. Thanks for the quick reply on this.
I also have an older version of Wonderware 7.11 and here is how I solved the same problem. Kepware supports OPC and Suitelink. I’m using one Kepware server to send the Suitelink data to Wonderware and the same Kepware OPC server to send data to FSQL.
If your version of Wondware doesn’t support suite Kepware can do DDE and NetDDE. Also Wonderware had an OPClink software protocol converter. It is free on the I/O server CD and it speaks DDE, Suitelink and OPC.