Question on COM/DCOM Availability under Win 10 and Replacement of OPC DA|Classic OPC: DA, A&E, HDA, XML-DA, etc.|Forum|OPC Foundation

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Question on COM/DCOM Availability under Win 10 and Replacement of OPC DA
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Ulrich Pfeiffer
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04/21/2021 - 04:37
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Hello all,

we see more and more signs of COM/DCOM not always working properly. Is there any real/"official" information available, that helps understanding how long COM/DCOM functionality - needed to run Classic OPC DA - will be kept available under MS Win 10?

In the field there are quite a lot of implementations using Classic OPC DA Client integration. Especially this means the implementations include APIs that support OPC DA Client. In case COM/DCOM is no longer supported the used API needs to be replaced by OPC UA. Right? Is there a OPC  UA Client API (e.g. compiled dll, ActiveX ) available that can be used to replace the old OPC DA interfaces (e.g. OPCDAauto.dll).

Any response could be helpful.

Thanks on advance

Ulrich

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Randy Armstrong
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04/21/2021 - 14:54
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The trouble with DCOM support is MS is always adding security fixes to Windows that can break OPC DCOM applications.

We have gotten them to fix issues in the past but we need specific information to make such a request ("its not working" is usually not enough).

We encourage vendors to limit OPC COM to local machine communication only and rely on OPC UA for communication between nodes.

If you are looking for off the shelf binaries there are a number of gateway applications that expose OPC UA interfaces and support COM as an input. There is no precompiled binary available from the OPC Foundation, however, sample code is here:

https://github.com/OPCFoundati.....ter/ComIOP

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Ulrich Pfeiffer
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04/22/2021 - 03:58
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Hi Randy,

thanks for the feedback. Assume you are from OPC foundation and know a little bit more the details then me.

So for my understanding: at the moment there is no official NO GO or retirement from Microsoft for COM/DCOM announced. Right?

As we are anyway using OPC DA on local with just OPC Servers from the market it depends on the OPC Server provider if he still includes an option to allow DA Client connection. Right?

Thanks

Ulrich

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Ulrich Pfeiffer
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04/22/2021 - 03:59
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Is there also a Library provided for C++?

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Randy Armstrong
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04/22/2021 - 05:30
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No C++ sample code.

I suggest evaulating products like https://www.unified-automation.....teway.html if you need a quick solution (other vendors have similar solutions).

MS has not dropped DCOM support and likely will not. However, OPC COM has some unique characteristics that can conflict with security patches which means issues will come up. If you can identify the specific patch we can report to MS.

Local DCOM has a lot fewer security issues.

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Marimuthu Ananthan
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07/26/2021 - 22:18
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Hi,

Microsoft has identified some vulnerabilities at DCOM

ref: https://msrc.microsoft.com/upd.....2021-26414.

https://support.microsoft.com/.....ed901c769c

If we enable this DCOM Hardening it's working fine with the local OPC server.

But not working with Remote OPC Server. If we try to connect remote OPC Server with local OPC Client its throw "E_NETWORK_ERROR". 

Any solution or workaround for this MS Patch?

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