Wonderware & Siemens

Hi,

I want to connect Wonderware Scada to Siemens S7-300 PLC.
Please guide me about the settings required.
What will be the Application Name,Topic Name and Node name.
I want to use DDE protocol.

Duncan.

Most of the newer SCADA packages use OPC instead of DDE.

OPC is definately the preferred way of doing things nowadays.

But, for DDE, the Application name is the name of the IO Server executable (always if it's a WonderWare server), or one that is provided with the IO Server documentation.

The Topic name is a name you create inside of the IO Server and associate with a physical device. Most DDE and OPC servers can handle multiple devices concurrently, so you might define PLC1, PLC2, and PLC3 within the server to talk to three different PLC's. The same topic is then used in WonderWare to pick which one you want to refer to for a tag. Another use for the Topic name, is to refer to the same device, but with different polling rates. Maybe you want alarm bits to be polled at 200ms, and status information to be polled slower, say 1 second. Make two topics pointing to the same device with different poll rates... ie, PLC1-Fast, PLC1-Slow.

The Node Name (in WonderWare) can be left blank if the IO server is on the same computer as the WonderWare application. If the server is on a remote computer, you need to enter the network-name for that computer here. Be aware that when using DDE with networked computers, getting connected to remote servers can be VERY TRICKY, especially in Windows 2000 and above. Many times, topics will fail to initialize, or have access-restrictions imposed by the configuration of the operating system. WonderWare's old "NetDDE Helper" can sometimes get around that, but not always.

And no, I don't represent the company at all, but especially for Siemens connectivity, I STRONGLY reccomend that you take a look at TopServer which can be found here . That is an excellent IO Server, supporting DDE and OPC, and can have multiple product servers running under a single application (Siemens, Modbus, AB, etc). It is also worlds easier to configure than the Siemens Drivers (which you need seperately, even if using the WonderWare I/O servers)

Good luck!

Hi!
It seems I don't know any thing at all.
Can I start this old forum with my further questions about OPC and InTouch.
I'm using Siemens PLC and InTouch with DDE ot SuiteLink communication. We have a DDE server to run the communication between CP (in the PC) and InTouch.
I'm interested how OPC works. Does a man need to buy a server or there are some free, and how to connect InTouch to CP and further to PLC by using OPC server.
I red this forum http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=11878&highlight=set+OPC
to configure with CP5512 and OPC server as described by Jesper, but still don't have contact with PLC and don't know how to proceed. I just have red that InTouch uses OPC but I'm not known with the technology OPC how to implement in InTouch. For DDE it's OK, I see the server application name and defin ACCESS name etc. but what I need to do with OPC, do I have an OPC using SimaticNET, or I still need to by a specia SW as this one TopServer