Gateway Communication Driver Architecture

Gateway Communication Driver is a collection of components that work in concert to provide communications access with a variety of data sources and clients. These components include:

• OI Server Manager: This is the MMC snap-in, that is part of the OCMC suite of utilities, supplied with Gateway Communication Driver . It provides the necessary user-interface for diagnostics, configuration, and activation.

• Client Plug-ins: These are the components that are added to Gateway Communication Driver to enable communications with clients. Examples are OPC, DDE/Suitelink, and so on.

• OI Server Engine: This is the library that contains all the common logic to drive data access.

• Device Protocol: This is the custom code provided by Gateway Communication Driver to define the communications between particular data sources and clients.

Gateway Communication Driver is comprised of three physical parts:

• Plug-in Component(s): Responsible for communicating with clients.

• OI Server Engine: This common component is used by Gateway Communication Driver as well as all Communication Drivers.

• Data Source Protocol Layer, Gateway Communication Driver -specific: This component is responsible for communicating with the data sources.

The following diagram describes the Gateway Communication Driver system architecture.

Each physical part of Gateway Communication Driver is comprised of three sets of modules, each required for a fully functioning Gateway Communication Driver.

• a set of .exe and/or .dll modules

• the plug-ins and the OI Engine

• he Data Source Protocol Layer (Gateway Communication Driver-specific) created by the Toolkit user