Proficy iFIX OPC Client Version 7.42 Release Notes GE Intelligent Platforms, Inc. (GEIP) Contents A.

Required Software A1. Important Information about Windows XP and Windows Vista Firewall B. General Information C. Known Issues D. Troubleshooting D.1 Automatically Starting the OPC Client D.2 USING LICENSING SOFTWARE A. REQUIRED SOFTWARE The OPC Client driver requires the following software: * * * * * * * Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (32 and 64-bit) Microsoft Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit) Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Microsoft Windows Vista Business or Ultimate Edition Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 or greater Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 or greater Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or Advanced Server Edition Service Pack 2 or greater * Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6a or greater A.1 IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT WINDOWS XP and Windows Vista Firewall There are Firewall settings that must be configured before you can access remote OPC servers. For more information, refer to the OPC Client online help topic Set Up Windows XP or Vista Firewall for Remote OPC Serv ers. B. GENERAL INFORMATION * In version 7.41a of the OPC Client, code changes were made to check for invalid formats of floating point values being returned from the OPC Server, and to generate errors when invalid formats are found. These changes were made to support OPC Foundation Certification of the OPC Client. These changes may cause errors to occur in your current configuration, after upgrading to version 7.41a. To address this concern, the OPC Client driver (version 7.41a and above) now includes a check box in the PowerTool on the Options menu > Setup > Advanced tab to "Disable Floating Point Checks." When this check box is selected, the driver does not check the format of floating point values returned from the OPC Server. This is a global setting, and remains set until you clear the check box, or the driver is re-installed. By default, this check box is cleared, meaning the driver will check the format of the floating point values returned from the OPC Server and generate errors for invalid floating point values. * If you are running on a Vista operating system and you are using the OPC Client driver with iFIX, GEIP strongly recommends that both applications run in the same service context. Mixing modes of

operation is not supported in Windows Vista. For example, if iFIX is running in Service mode, the OPC Client must also run in Service mode or if iFIX is not running in service mode, the client must run in non-service mode. * The OPC Client should be stopped before importing, reloading, or generating a process database. * 7.x drivers no longer use the Period field in Mission Control. * The OPC Client has an Overruns field in the Power Tool at the driver, server, group, and item statistics level. You can use this field as a troubleshooting tool to assist in optimization. The presence of overruns do not necessarily indicate a problem. Any of the following conditions can cause overruns: * Bandwidth saturation on your network. * Turnaround delays in the PLC. * Overflowing message queues in the process hardware. Please refer to the OPC Client Help for more information on overruns. You can find information on overruns by displaying the driver statistics in the Power Tool, selecting the Overruns field, and pressing the F1 key. * Do not install or uninstall a new version of the OPC Client while an old version is running. Always stop and exit the driver before installing or uninstalling new version of the OPC Client. C. KNOWN ISSUES The OPC Client driver has the following known issues: * Analog Register and Digital Register blocks in iFIX databases do not support exception-based processing. In addition, the OPC Client does not support using the Text block with exception-based processing. * The OPC Client does not support exception-based processing for database blocks that reference items configured as data arrays. * Do not overlap data arrays when using RS-Linx v2.3 or greater. If you do overlap arrays, modification of arrays element may change elements that you do not intend to overwrite. Consequently, we recommend if you require data arrays to overlap, use RS-Linx v2.2. * If you shut down iFIX before shutting down the OPC Client Power Tool, you will not be able to restart iFIX. Shut down the OPC Client Power Tool before restarting iFIX. * If you are using this OPC Client driver (v7.41) in iFIX 4.5, 15-digit precision is supported for data values only, and not for signal conditioning. Therefore, in iFIX 4.5, signal conditioning calculations are limited to 7 digits of precision. In other words, if the range of your EGU limits exceeds 7 digits, a small amount of imprecision will be introduced into the calculated result for signal conditioning. * If you are using iFIX 5.0 with this OPC Client driver (v7.41), 15-digit precision is supported for both data values and signaling conditioning.

* Prior to iFIX 4.5, 15-digit precision was not supported. Instead, you are limited to the 7 digit limits imposed by the use of single precision values. D. TROUBLESHOOTING Only use the OPC Client server window for troubleshooting. When you are not debugging a problem, disable all debug messages and close the server window. Leaving debug messages enabled or leaving the OPC Client server window open degrades driver performance. If you experience difficulty installing the OPC Client, refer to the following sections for information on how to resolve the problem. D.1 AUTOMATICALLY STARTING THE OPC CLIENT When you install the OPC Client, the installation program creates a driver configuration file called nodename.OPC. FIX uses this file when you automatically start the server. If you subsequently change the name of your SCADA server after installing the OPC server, FIX cannot automatically start the server because the name of the node does not match the name of the configuration file. To correct this, rename the configuration file to match the name of your SCADA server. For example, if you change the name of the SCADA server from SCADA1 to SCADA9, rename the configuration file from SCADA1.OPC to SCADA9.OPC. D.2 USING LICENSING SOFTWARE You must use the latest GEIP Licensing software to avoid problems with key checking when the OPC Client launches an GEIP OPC Server. The GEIP Licensing software is available from the GEIP support web site at www.ge-ip.com/support.