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Northbound Interfaces
Your portal to the cloud or supervising systems.
Northbound Interface Overview
The Northbound Interface in WinCC OA provides a unified interface for multiple northbound communication protocols.
Basic Configuration

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- MQTT Publisher
  The MQTT publisher provides a northbound data interface for MQTT clients to data point values within the WinCC OA project.
- Node-RED
  Node-RED is a flow-based programming tool that allows the creation of applications in a graphic environment.
- OPC UA Server
  The WinCC OA OPC UA Server provides an OPC UA interface to access WinCC OA datapoint values, alarms and historical data.
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  The OPC Server enables the communication with OPC clients.
- OPC HDA Server
  The WinCC OA OPC Historical Data Access (HDA) Server is used for the exchanging of archived process data of the WinCC OA project.
- OPC Alarms & Events
  OPC Alarms & Events (brief OPC A&E) is in addition to the Data Access another standard in order to implement a central alert management manufacturer spanning. OPC A&E is used to guarantee the coupling with other control systems as well as to display alerts and events in a hierarchical system
- Modbus/TCP Server
  The Modbus/TCP server provides the possibility for Modbus/TCP clients to query data from a WinCC OA system and arrange the data within a Modbus data model.
- SNMP
  SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a protocol for monitoring network devices (servers, workstations, routers, switches and hubs etc.) and their functions. It allows you to administer your network.
- OLE DB Provider
  OLE DB is a Microsoft specification for accessing data on different computers. It is based on Microsoft's COM technology and is the successor to the older and limited ODBC technology.
- Insights Hub Connector
  The Insights Hub connector allows you to upload data from WinCC OA to Siemens Industrial Cloud Insights Hub and to process data. WinCC OA supports the integration of SCADA data from WinCC OA to Insights Hub.
- Northbound Interface Overview
  The Northbound Interface in WinCC OA provides a unified interface for multiple northbound communication protocols.
  - Northbound Manager Interface Overview
    This topic provides an overview of the Northbound Manager interface, describing its main sections and configuration options for both DP Group and Plantmodel data sources.
  - Basic Configuration
    - Configure with DP Group
      Configure a DP Group as the data source for the Sparkplug B EoN Node.
    - Configure with Plantmodel
      Configure a Plantmodel as the data source for the Sparkplug B EoN Node.
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Basic Configuration

To setup the Northbound Manager, you need to add a new manager to your project:

Add a new WinCC OA JavaScript Manager with the command line parameters:
```
northbound-interface/index.js <Connection Name>
```
The connection name is later used within the Northbound Manager interface to setup the connection details.

The connection name must be unique, but multiple managers with different connection names can be configured.
Open the Northbound Manager Interface Overview panel.

You can find it in:System Management > Driver > NBM Sparkplug B.
After the basic setup, connection-specific configurations can be made. For Sparkplug B, the option to configure via DP Groups (see Configure with DP Group) or via Plantmodel (see Configure with Plantmodel) can be used.

Northbound Interface - Debug Flags

The JavaScript Manager provides the following debug flags, which can be added to the manager by using the manager parameter -dbg <FLAG>. The parameter must be set before the script name, see Syntax Manager Options.

Table 1. Available Debug Flags
Type	Description
CONN	Connection-related debug messages
DATA	Data-related debug messages
CONFIG	Configuration-related debug messages
WRITE	Write-related debug messages
DIAGNOSTICS	Diagnostics-related debug messages