Can a newer version of G2-OPC Client Bridge be used within an older environment?

Overview

This article explains the impact of using a newer version of the G2-OPC Client Bridge and an old G2-2011 environment.

E.g: Losing comms and having to restart the OPC bridge while using the 2019 version of g2opc.exe (G2-OPC Client Bridge) within the G2-2011 environment.

Information

The general architecture of the OPC bridge has not changed between 2011 and the 2019 versions, but there have been bug fixes and other overall changes/improvements on the bridge and on G2's side in regards to how it communicates with the bridge.

The compatibility between two different versions might technically work but it isn't guaranteed and nor encouraged. E.g. the 2011/2019 versions respectively. This could lead to issues like losing comms and having to restart the OPC bridge, so the following steps are suggested:

• Run the latest version of G2 with the OPC bridge that is packaged with the installer.

• If the latest version cannot be run now, run the OPC bridge that is packaged with the version of G2 you are running.

Also, there have been a few important fixes released in the latest version of the software for OPC issues, so we would suggest that you consider upgrading to the latest version. Below are some of the specific fixes released.

• Issue: There was an error handling some OPC timestamps, which could prevent the propagation of OPC item values.

Solution: OPC timestamps are handled correctly.

• Issue: Write to OPC items failed with “Failed to get timestamp of OPC items” error but OPC item status stayed 0 (OK).

Solution: The misleading error message is corrected and the status is set accordingly.