Summer is here, and often the ‘go-to guy or gal’ for a given question is on vacation or otherwise not available (Like Canada Day or Fourth of July extended long weekends).  The folks in MatrikonOPC Support and Site Services seem to be putting extra effort this week into adding to the OPC Knowledge Base.  Of course that might just be routine maintenance and have nothing to do with rotating summer vacations.  (Speaking of not being around, I’m off for a few days of quiet camping beside a remote mountain lake. No Wi-Fi.  No cell phone.  No posts for next week.)  

It’s inevitable in any company that the person who’s been around the longest, seen the most or is just good at solving problems becomes the go-to person for a particular skill.  Since OPC has been around for over 10 years now and is used some much, across so many industries, are companies developing their own in-house OPC problem solvers, or do they rely on OPC vendors for help?  Now that OPC UA is becoming a reality how does that affect the in-house guru’s?  Are they getting up to speed on OPC UA with training courses and webinars, or will the experience just come with time?

I suppose part of the answer depends on what sort of issues people are facing, and how severely it impacts their business.  So, what are the most common OPC problems you experience?  Is it DCOM? OPC Enum or remote connection problems?  Vendor interoperability? Windows domains or cross platform problems? Security concerns?  Let me know, so I can ponder the answers as I watch the sunset dip into that mountain lake next week J