Cogent is pleased to announce that Sumelco Technologies in Spain will be distributing the OPC DataHub. Sumelco distributes instruments and software for process control applications, and sees the OPC DataHub as a valuable resource for their customer base.

"We have many customers, system integrators mainly, who use OPC," said Daniel Martinez, General Manager of Sumelco. "They all need access to their data. If they have any OPC server on a machine, they can install the OPC DataHub and then take the data and put it where they wish--databases, email, Excel files, or web pages."

An all-new DataHub video, 'Reading Data from a Database', shows how to make a connection from a database to an OPC server using the OPC DataHub. By making a few simple edits to a DataHub script, you can read data from any ODBC-compliant database into the OPC DataHub, and then write it to an OPC server.

In addition, the 'Using the Bridging Interface' DataHub video has been updated, demonstrating even more clearly how easy it is to connect data points between two OPC servers.

The DataHub scripting engine (called Gamma) is a powerful, full featured language that is used in industrial control systems. It can be used for something as simple as a custom bridging application to something as complex as a complete user interface.

The functions from Microsoft's Win32 API are mapped into the version of Gamma running on the OPC DataHub. This allows you to start up Windows applications from within a DataHub script. There are a couple of options, depending on how much precision you want in starting the new process.