A better (and free) OPC Historical Data Access (HDA) Test Client - Advosol HDA Client

I'm glad to share that i found a new tool which is a lot slicker and nicer to work with.

All this while - i always use MatrikonOPC HDA Explorer which is buggy and looks like a half cooked software.

Kudos to Advosol. 

I like it very much. 

https://www.advosol.com/topic/downloadFreeTools

Step by Step to add OPC Data from Kepware Kepserver to Canary Historian

ok guys..
pls be careful..
i learnt this the hard way..
it is easy to add OPC tags into Canary Historian..
but pls follow the step by steps carefully.

1. Setup your OPC DA Server. In my case i used Kepware KEPServerEx. It is one of my favorite OPC Server due to its reliability and its technical support is strong. 
2. After i setup OPC DA Server - i tested its functionality by browsing OPC data via Matrikon OPC Explorer or any other similar tools.
3. Now your OPC data is verified.
4. Move on to Canary.
5. Setup your Canary Logger - imagine this is a Canary "collecting" agent. Similar to OSIsoft PI Node. Canary Logger can be installed on the same PC as OPC Server or on another PC. In my case, i installed on the same PC. To make it easier for OPC COM/DCOM issues.
6. So this is the step i missed out.
7. Before configuring Canary Logger - i missed to create a "Data Set" at Canary Administrator. A Data Set is like a "folder" for new data to come in. In Canary, u can creates multiple Data Sets or this folders so that u can segregate incoming data. This is super cool features.
8. I also learnt - in Canary you must put Data Set as your prefix of your tag name. Else you will get error messages.

In this photo - u can see my Data Set is named "Kepware_Data" - so any data incoming from my Kepware KEPServerEx OPC Server is grouped into this DS.

This is shot from Canary Logger - i also learnt that your tag name must have Data Set in front of it !!!
Eg. _.PV
if you dont put DS as a prefix - data wont flow in