ATTENTION: The DDE standard and driver are now deprecated and are only included in the ClearSCADA product for backward compatibility.
This driver is a simple driver. It provides additional functionality to enable ClearSCADA to interface with specific supported devices using a particular protocol. To interact successfully with such devices, you need to:
- Install and run the driver
- Ensure that the driver is licensed
- Configure the required database items and settings on the driver
- Ensure that the database items (and any database items on which they depend) have valid, saved, configuration and are 'In Service'.
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is a commonly used communications protocol that enables data exchange between servers and clients, regardless of the product manufacturer.
ClearSCADA can use the DDE protocol to communicate with third-party devices, such as Siemens® S5 PLCs. The ClearSCADA DDE Driver provides a ClearSCADA system with the additional functionality required to communicate with devices using the DDE protocol.
The DDE documentation explains how to configure DDE-specific features and items within the ClearSCADA database (see Configuring DDE Devices in ClearSCADA). In order to configure such items successfully, you need to be familiar with DDE Components and Terminology.
The documentation also explains driver-specific aspects that may be of interest to System Administrators and engineers when investigating unexpected system behavior (see DDE Specific Status Display Attributes).
NOTE: There are no driver-specific pick actions for database items on this particular driver. However, users with the required privileges can add custom pick actions to a database item by using the User Methods tab on the relevant configuration Form (see Using the User Methods Tab to Define Custom Actions in the ClearSCADA Guide to Core Configuration). See a system administrator for the documentation associated with such custom actions (also known as ‘methods’).