OLE for Process Control (OPC), which stands for Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) for Process Control, is the original name for a standards specification developed in 1996 by an industrial automation industry task force. The standard specifies the communication of real-time plant data between control devices from different manufacturers.
As of November 2011, the OPC Foundation has officially renamed the acronym to mean "Open Platform Communications". The change in name reflects the applications of OPC technology for applications in Process Control, discrete manufacturing, building automation, and many others. OPC has also grown beyond its original OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) implementation to include other data transportation technologies including XML, Microsoft's .NET Framework, and even the OPC Foundation's binary-encoded TCP format.
After the initial release in 1996, the OPC Foundation was created to maintain the standard. Since then, standards have been added and names have been changed. As of June, 2006, "OPC is a series of standards specifications". (Seven current standards and two emerging standards.) "The first standard (originally called simply the OPC Specification"), is "now called the Data Access Specification", or (later on the same page) "OPC Data Access", or OPC Data Access Specification.
Read more about OLE For Process Control: Origin and Uses, Design, Future
Famous quotes containing the words ole, process and/or control:
“Go down, Moses
‘Way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh,
To let my people go.”
—Unknown. Go Down, Moses (l. 1–4)
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Imagine believing in the control of inflation by curbing the money supply! That is like deciding to stop your dog fouling the sidewalk by plugging up its rear end. It is highly unlikely to succeed, but if it does it kills the hound.”
—Michael D. Stephens. “On Sinai, There’s No Economics,” New York Times (Nov. 13, 1981)