Migration of TF6120
One of the primary purposes of the UA Gateway is to provide a sustainable connectivity in order to replace the Tx6120 OPC DA supplement/function. Observe the following notes if you wish to migrate Tx6120 OPC DA to UA Gateway.
Standard configuration
The standard configuration of the UA Gateway automatically establishes a connection with the local OPC UA Server and offers the OPC DA clients an OPC DA interface. For a connection based on this standard configuration, the OPC DA clients must take the following into account:
- The default ProgID of the UA Gateway is "UnifiedAutomation.Gateway.1". The TwinCAT OPC DA Server uses a different ProgID ("Beckhoff.TwinCATOpcServerDA").
- The UA Gateway always uses a ProgID instead of multiple clones.
- The ItemIdentifie of an OPC symbol is generated differently in the UA Gateway than in the TwinCAT OPC DA Server. This behavior can be changed to be more similar to that of the OPC DA server.
Changing the syntax of an ItemIdentifier
The syntax used by the UA Gateway for ItemIdentifier can be changed so that the latter corresponds more to the type of the TwinCAT OPC DA Server. By default, the UA Gateway uses a different syntax to that of the TwinCAT OPC DA Server when creating its identifiers.
UA Gateway sample:
Sample TwinCAT OPC DA Server:
The UA Gateway uses a prefix so that the underlying OPC UA Client from which the variable originates can be clearly identified.
The following steps are required to configure the UA Gateway so that it forms its identifiers in approximately the same way as the TwinCAT OPC DA Server. The functionality has been implemented to simplify the migration process.
- 1. Open the UA Gateway configuration file
C:\Program Files (x86)\UnifiedAutomation\UaGateway\bin\uagateway.config.xml - 2. Look for the following XML tags in the XML file:
<OpcServerConfig>
<ComDaServerConfig>
<ComDaNamespaceUseAlias>false</ComDaNamespaceUseAlias>
</ComDaServerConfig>
</OpcServerConfig>
- 3. If the XML tag ComDaNamespaceUseAlias is set to "true", user-defined prefixes can be specified. To do this, look for the following XML tag in the same XML file:
<OpcServerConfig>
<UaServerConfig>
<ConfiguredNamespaces>
...
</ConfiguredNamespaces
</UaServerConfig>
</OpcServerConfig>
- 4. In this XML structure, identify the TwinCAT OPC UA Server namespace. By default, it should read as follows:
<OpcServerConfig>
<UaServerConfig>
<ConfiguredNamespaces>
...
<Namespace>
<Index>...</Index>
<Uri>TcOpcUaServer/urn:Hostname:BeckhoffAutomation:Ua:PLC1</Uri>
<AllowRenameUri>false</AllowRenameUri>
<UniqueId>TcOpcUaServer#TcOpcUaServer/urn:Hostname:BeckhoffAutomation:Ua:PLC1</UniqueId>
<ComAlias>...</ComAlias>
</Namespace>
...
</ConfiguredNamespaces
</UaServerConfig>
</OpcServerConfig>
- 5. On your computer, the placeholder "..." may look different. Set <ComAlias> to your preferred prefix, for example "PLC1". The identifiers are then created with the prefix "PLC1".
