Hello!
I have some questions about Wine and how/if it can be used with industrial communication like OPC (MicroSoft Com/DCom objects, DDE and more)
My short question is: Can I use Wine to make OPC communication work on a Linux system.
OPC "OLE for Process Control" A "general" standard for communication in industrial systems, that unfortunately is totally depending on Windows(DCOM)
I work on a small company in Sweden who make industrial computers for the industry, and when we a few years ago had to choose operating system for our new model I got them to choose Linux. And almost everything is perfect, we have had a working product for almost a year now, and everything is good. But now our company needs to support OPC, this is a big problem that makes a lot of people in the company start saying things like WinCE or Win XP embedded.
On www.opcfoundation.org ther are same companys how have made Unix OPC clients, but the license costs are hi. Ther is also OPC true XML that is now a real product, that looks promising.
I'am in need to make/use same kind of OPC api(Wine DCom) for Linux, a api like that woode make many companys in the industrial computer intressted. Or as a backup I could have a Win program running in Wine on the Linux machine talking with the main app on the same computer and talking OPC to other machines that need that.
I hope Wine and/or you can help me in this case. It would be a tragedy if we had to switch operating system just because of this.
/Rickard
Rickard Svensson wrote:
My short question is: Can I use Wine to make OPC communication work on a Linux system.
Answer: almost certainly yes, with a catch:
1) Wines current builtin DCOM is not up to scratch for what you want, and it will take a long time to get there. Really, given how unglamourous network DCOM hacking is and how few people have worked on it, it's unlikely to happen until funding is available.
2) So ... you'd have to use "native" DCOM. This is a redistributable that can be downloaded from microsoft.com and installed into Wine. You'd have to read the EULA very carefully but I suspect you need a Windows license in order to use it.
However, even if you do, simply buying a copy of Windows then throwing away the box may actually still be easier than switching your project to another OS entirely.
OPC "OLE for Process Control" A "general" standard for communication in industrial systems, that unfortunately is totally depending on Windows(DCOM)
Could you be a bit more specific? What kind of industry? Do you mean things like controlling robots on production lines? Yep I know am I pretty ignorant about anything related to factories :)
On www.opcfoundation.org ther are same companys how have made Unix OPC clients, but the license costs are hi. Ther is also OPC true XML that is now a real product, that looks promising.
Yes, I saw that. They are pushing the DCOM to Unix port that Microsoft did. It's probably cheaper to license Windows and then just use native DCOM than use that but you'd have to check. What are the prices?
thanks -mike
On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:09:37 +0100, you wrote:
Rickard Svensson wrote:
My short question is: Can I use Wine to make OPC communication work on a Linux system.
Answer: almost certainly yes, with a catch:
- Wines current builtin DCOM is not up to scratch for what you want,
and it will take a long time to get there. Really, given how unglamourous network DCOM hacking is and how few people have worked on it, it's unlikely to happen until funding is available.
- So ... you'd have to use "native" DCOM. This is a redistributable
that can be downloaded from microsoft.com and installed into Wine. You'd have to read the EULA very carefully but I suspect you need a Windows license in order to use it.
Mike, I was hesitating to give this answer. Typically OPC will be used distributed, over an ethernet link. Did anyone test wine & native DCOM in such a way? Can you actually communicate between an application running under Wine with an application that runs under real Windows?
Rein.
Mike, I was hesitating to give this answer. Typically OPC will be used distributed, over an ethernet link. Did anyone test wine & native DCOM in such a way? Can you actually communicate between an application running under Wine with an application that runs under real Windows?
I'm not sure. I think it may have been used for Exchange5/Outlook connections, but you are right in that I don't know if this works.
Wines sockets support is good though, far better than its builtin DCOM. Based on what I know of the DCOM network protocol, I don't think we'd have any problems with it.
Only issue would be if you needed NT only features, as only DCOM for Windows 98 works natively on Wine.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any big issues. Maybe dcomcfg doesn't quite work yet etc, but fixing any problems that arise would be much easier than migrating to a totally different OS, or bringing our own DCOM up to scratch ...
-
Mike Hearn -
Rein Klazes -
Rickard Svensson