Get started

A Communication Driver is a component of a software system that connects your software application with sources of information on the factory floor. The OI Server Manager (also known as Communication Drivers Core) is a part of the Operations Control Management Console (OCMC) suite of utilities (previously known as System Management Console (SMC)). It enables the configuration, diagnosis, activation, or deactivation of a local Communication Driver located on a different node from the OI Server Manager.

Servers developed with the Toolkit can be stand-alone products or designed for use with System Platform based products. You can open multiple instances of the OI Server Manager at the same time; however, you can use only the first instance to create device hierarchies and configure a Communication Driver. In all other instances of the OI Server Manager, hierarchy and configuration settings are set to read-only.

Note: The OI Server Manager user interface may look different on different versions of Microsoft Windows. In addition, the version of Microsoft Management Console (MMC) installed on your computer may affect the content and behavior of the user interface.

Before you begin

Before you begin configuring the Communication Driver, verify the following items:

• A PC is set up with the necessary network cards, and connected to the necessary networks.

• The Communication Driver and the OI Server Manager are installed with the proper licenses. For more information, see the AVEVA Enterprise Licensing documentation.

• The client software is installed.

• The device(s) is/are connected (networked) and, if necessary, programmed.

• Ensure you have the additional information necessary for configuration:

  • device network configuration and addresses

  • data items needed for the client application

  • device name/topic name/group name

  • desired update intervals

    Note: The Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) guidelines recommend against using automatically created users like aaUser and aaAdminUser with well-known or publicly documented passwords. Hence, the Communication Drivers Core supports the non-admin user to run the OCMC and configure software.

Documentation

This document describes the user interface, features, and functions of the Communication Drivers Core. OI Core and OI Server are now called as Communication Drivers Core and Communication Driver respectively. However, you may see “OI Core” or "OI Server" in some instances of documents, Operations Control Management Console (OCMC) tree hierarchy, upgrade path, and so on.

This documentation uses the following conventions.

• Initial Capitals: Paths and file names.

• Bold: Menus, commands, dialog box names, and dialog box options.

• Monospace: Code samples and display text.