Component Environments

OI Gateway has the following characteristics:

• The OI Server Engine is dynamically linked to the other OI Gateway components. In other words, a new OI Server Engine (feature enhancement or bug fix) would not require relinking to the other components nor re-QA of those other components. When deployed to the system, the new OI Server Engine would attach to all existing OI Gateway components.

• Newly deployed Plug-ins (feature enhancements or bug fixes) do not require relinking nor re-QA of associated components. Even new Plug-ins (for example, OPC Alarm & Events) would not require any development changes to the other components, and therefore no relinking in a customer- installed base. In fact, it is feasible to implement new functionality in a Plug-in to enhance OI Gateway without any involvement of the code of the other components.

• OI Gateway can be configured in one stand-alone configuration utility (OI Server Manager), and the OI Server Manager is capable of displaying specific configuration views for OI Gateway as well as other OI Servers. This utility allows the browsing and editing of Data Access products on different nodes.

• The OI Server Manager diagnostics tool displays generic diagnostic objects common to OI Gateway as well as all OI Server, in addition to OI Gateway-specific/OI Gateway-developer-defined diagnostic data.

OI Gateway's data configuration format is XML. Any XML-enabled program (for example, XML Editor) can read this format.