OPC Server Status

[dgw]

I am working on an application with LabVIEW DSC 7.1. I am connecting to 12 Intellution iFix OPC Servers with the Tag Engine and reading over 1000 tags every 4 seconds.

When I start my application everything starts up and runs well. After some time (1 hour ~ 3 days) all of the tags associated with one of the servers will stop updating. The value and timestamp don�t change but the status is 0 indicating there is no problem when in fact there is a major problem.

To try and troubleshoot this problem, I have started running Integration Object�s DA Explorer in parallel with my LabVIEW application on the same client computer. The DA Explorer detects the same problem with the OPC server, except it immediately
reports it. LabVIEW however, continues happily along as if nothing is wrong.

Is there a way for LabVIEW to monitor the status of a remote OPC server without me having to kludge in watchdog timers for all my OPC servers?

I have already asked NI Technical Support for help on this issue and their best answer was to post a question here.

I would greatly appreciate any help or guidance on this issue.

[unclebump]

I use KEPWARE for my OPC server. There is an option to have the tag engine create all of the tags that it can see from the OPC server. Some of these tags are dedicated system tags that are automatically added. One of these might be a status tag for the opc server. There might be a parameter setting inside your OPC software to have it create these extra tags.

[dgw]

Although Intellution is one of the originators of OPC, their OPC servers leave a lot to be desired. There are no system tags that I can find. I have a call into Intellution Tech Support, maybe they can come up with something.

Even with the lack of apparent functionality in the Intellution OPC server the Integration Objects DA Explorer is able to correctly detect server problems without out monitoring any OPC data. I can connect it to a server and without defining any groups or items, it is able to determine when a problem exists with the connection to the server. Why can't the DSC Tag Engine do this??