Special Functions

Chapter Contents
Audit Trail The Audit trail panel allows tracking important changes via the user administration (e.g. set points, parameters etc.).
Common Name Service CNS allows mapping data points to different views. The data can be arranged in various ways depending on the user requirements. Furthermore the "Plantmodel Editor" and the provided CNS functions are described.
COM Description of the COM (Component Object Model) interface in WinCC OA. Furthermore, you can find the available methods of the COM Manager in this chapter.
Connection monitoring Description of the alive mechanism, which monitors the connection to the managers in WinCC OA.
Control-ADO (Access to external databases) Description of the ADO and Qt interface, which are used for accessing OLE DB or ODBC-compatible databases from CTRL.
Control Extensions Description of the extensions that allow C++ functions to be added to the programming language.
CTRL OA Unit Test Library The CTRL OA Unit dynamic link library contains a set of functions that can be used for testing purposes
DBLogger The WinCC OA DBLoggerallows the export of user-defined data from WinCC OA into an external database(DB).
Distributed systems Description of how distributed systems are set up with WinCC OA.
Dist-Management Description of the Dist-Management, which reduces the engineering effort for distributed systems.
Encryption of Panels and CTRL Scripts/Libraries The encryption of panels and CTRL scripts/libraries allows encrypting your panels or scripts and thus protect your knowledge and work.
HTTP Server Displaying WinCC OA data via intranet or web. Description of the WAP function in WinCC OA.
Identification Caching & DP Identification

The DP identification in WinCC OA (shortly DP ID or DP identification) is a unique internal identifier for data points.

The identification contains the structure of the data types in a "TypeContainer" and the data point identifications " DP IDs".

The identification caching provides you an advantage especially when using remote user interfaces and distributed systems. Identification caching allows the identification to be sent as“delta” instead of the whole identification. Thus, only the changes of data are sent by the Data and the Dist managers. The sending of the “deltas” (only changes) fastens up the process significantly. A remote UI or a Dist manager only receives the identification changes (only data changes).
Kerberos Authentication

A WinCC OA system might be exposed to different type of attacks. An illegal WinCC OA system could connect to the distribution manager or hackers could manipulate WinCC OA messages.

In order to prevent eavesdropping or different types of attacks, a secured authentication was developed. The Kerberos-based authentication allows each WinCC OA component a verification of the identity of another component. WinCC OA servers will verify the identity of clients and clients will verify the identity of servers.
Maintenance package For configuring the entire maintenance of a system, controlled by WinCC OA, including operation-time counter, operations counter and maintenance protocol.
Message Compression Information on WinCC OA Message Compression that compresses WinCC OA messages.
Panel topology/Group alert facility

Creation of apanel topology: all panels in a project are organized into a hierarchy. This structuring simplifies the project enormously, especially when dealing with large process installations. Special functions then check the constructed topology (e.g. can the panels be accessed from individual buttons as defined in the panel topology).

Automatic generation of group alerts based on the panel topology: group alerts are defined that cover the whole panel hierarchy, so that any alerts occurring in the panels can be reported up through the hierarchy and displayed graphically according to definable priority ranges.
PM Agent

Provides access to PM-CONTROL, PM-QUALITY, PM-MAINT and PM-ANALYZE via the PM-SERVER infrastructure.
Recipes Managing the set points of several DPEs and send them to the periphery.
Redundant network connections Description of redundant network connections between several managers in WinCC OA and configuration.
Redundancy Description of how redundant systems are set up with WinCC OA.
Reporting The Reporting feature allows you to create reports in XML format. Historical data can be queried via the Reporting manager by using the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) interface.
Reporting with Panels (Silent print) When using the command line option -silentMode, the user interface runs in the background without a graphical display. It allows you to print any panels.

REST Reporting API

Via the Reporting REST API you can query tags (data point) information. Reports are created in JSON format.
Scheduler Create, configure and administrate a number of schedules of either time or event-triggered actions.
Security

Security Features von WinCC OA.

Authentication: User-defined External Authentication: WinCC OA supports also the usage of a User-defined External Authentication mechanism such as LDAP from an external user authentication tool.

Authentication: Server-side Authentication for UI Managers: When using the server-side authentication for UI managers the user has to authenticate himself to the User Interface via the HTTP server. Communication between the user interface and the WinCC OA core (Data manager / Event manager) is only possible if the login credentials are verified by the HTTP server and clearance is ensured via a user interface-specific token.

Authentication: Server-side Authentication for Managers: When sever-side authentication for managers is used, the managers that establish a connection to the Data or Event manager must authenticate themselves. This enhances the security especially when projects are connected over the Internet. In the server-side authentication for managers the managers must authenticate themselves by using x.509 certificates.

Multiplexing Proxy: The WinCC OA Multiplexing Proxy Manager is used to increase the security of your WinCC OA projects.

Certificates: Description of how to use certificates in WinCC OA, how to create certificates, Windows Certificate Store as well as config entries for the secure communication.
System Use Notification Configuration You can use the system use notification panel to display an instruction to the user when logging into the WinCC OA system. The user must confirm the notification before logging into the WinCC OA project.
SMS Send and receive SMS messages from WinCC OA.
System overview Description of the system overview panel for the diagnosis of a WinCC OA system.
Wizard Framework The Wizard Framework is used for an easy creation of Wizards in a uniform layout style.
XML panel format Creating panels with the XML format in WinCC OA and also converting WinCC OA panels into XML format.
XML-RPC The WinCC OA CtrlXmlRpc is a CONTROL extension including XmlRpc functions.
XMPP Instant Messaging XMPP (formerly Jabber) is mostly used in chat (instant messaging) applications and allows near real time communication between two or more parties. It can, e.g., be used to push information from a WinCC_OA project server to one or more persons, even allowing the recipient to send a confirmation back to the server.