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)
“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The child knows only that he engages in play because it is enjoyable. He isn’t aware of his need to play—a need which has its source in the pressure of unsolved problems. Nor does he know that his pleasure in playing comes from a deep sense of well-being that is the direct result of feeling in control of things, in contrast to the rest of his life, which is managed by his parents or other adults.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)