The OPCDA.NET Client Component is available in three versions:
| Evaluation Edition | The Evaluation edition has the functionality of the Professional Edition. It is restricted to a run-time of 30 minutes. The application has to be restarted after the evaluation time expired. |
| Standard Edition | The OPCDA.NET Standard edition provides a .NET interface for all OPC DA V2.05 and V3 specified features. |
| Professional Edition | The Professional edition offers additional classes that can reduce the application development effort significantly and supports the UA add-on option. |
The file names are the same in all editions. Multiple editions may be installed on one machine as long as setup is into different directories.
However, we recommend to have only one edition installed to prevent errors due to wrong files. All editions install the wizards into Visual Studio with the same name and therefore Visual Studio uses the edition installed last.
The OPCDA.NET package contains multiple versions of the server access DLL.
Support for .NET versions older than 4.0 and for the Xi add-on option was discontinued in V11.0
b) OPCDA.NET DLLs with different functionality
| DLL name | Description |
| OpcDaNet.Net4.dll | This DLL contains all features. Applications only need to reference this DLL. Some classes use system classes of the namespaces System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing. These namespaces are referenced and necessary even if the application doesn't use the particular OPCDA.NET classes. |
| OpcNetBase.Net4.dll | This DLL contains classes that are used in the Advosol client components for OPC DA, HDA and AE. Applications that reference multiple client components must reference this DLL and the client component DLL version without the base classes. |
| OpcDaNetB.Net4.dll | This DLL doesn't contain the base classes and must be used in combination with OpcNetbase.dll. The combination of this DLL and OpcNetBase.dll is identical to OpcDaNet.dll. |
| OpcDaNetNW.Net4.dll | This DLL doesn't contain the classes the reference the System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing. It's to be used in the rare situations where the System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing references are not acceptable. This DLL neither contains the base classes and must be used in combination with OpcNetbase.dll |
| OpcDaNetWPF.Net4.dll | The DLL contains classes that coordinate with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) classes instead of Forms. It neither contains the base classes and must be used in combination with OpcNetbase.dll This DLL is the WPF version of OpcDaNetB.dll. However, the DAServer and DAGroup component classes are not available because the current WPF designer doesn't support the necessary property dialog editors. |
| OpcDaNetUA.Net4.dll |
This DLL has the hooks for the UA option that allows DA and UA servers being accessed through the same API. This DLL needs to be referenced if the application uses the OPCDA.NET-UA option to access OPC Xi server through same API as DA servers. This DLL is provided only in the OPCDA.NET Professional Edition and the OPCDA.NET-UA option needs to be purchased separately. This DLL bases on OpcDaNetB.dll and doesn't contain the base classes. It must be used in combination with OpcNetbase.dll. |
| OpcDaNetWpfUA.Net4.dll | The DLL contains classes that coordinate with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) classes instead of Forms. This DLL has the hooks for the UA option that allows DA and UA servers being accessed through the same API. This DLL needs to be referenced if the WPF application uses the OPCDA.NET-UA option to access OPC Xi server through same API as DA servers. This DLL is provided only in the OPCDA.NET Professional Edition and the OPCDA.NET-UA option needs to be purchased separately. This DLL doesn't contain the base classes and must be used in combination with OpcNetbase.dll. The DAServer and DAGroup component classes are not available because the current WPF designer doesn't support the necessary property dialog editors. |