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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.

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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.
- OPC Server
  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.
- SECS/GEM Gateway
  SECS/GEM (SEMI Equipment Communications Standard/Generic Equipment Model) is built upon three SEMI standards E5-0224, E30-0224 and E37-00-0222, where the communication between semiconductor equipment and host system is done via TCP/IP.
- 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
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Northbound Interface Overview

The Northbound Interface in WinCC OA provides a unified interface for multiple northbound communication protocols.

The Northbound Interface is designed to enable communication between WinCC OA and external systems using standardized protocols. It is modular and will be extended to support additional protocols in the future. Currently only the Sparkplug B protocol is supported.

The Northbound Manager also supports Distributed systems for the Plantmodel (CNS) data source. In a distributed setup, data from remote WinCC OA systems can be published through the Northbound Interface using the Plantmodel data source. Enable the option Incl. system name in metric name to prefix metric names with the system name, allowing you to distinguish datapoints from different systems.

Sparkplug B EoN Node

The Sparkplug B EoN Node protocol is the first protocol supported by the Northbound Interface in WinCC OA.

The Sparkplug B EoN (Edge of Network) Node enables WinCC OA to communicate with external systems using the Sparkplug B specification over MQTT. This protocol is suitable for IIoT scenarios and provides efficient data exchange and interoperability.