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CTAPI remote requirements

Jason Sanders

Hi there,

I am a bit confused on what is required to connect to get CTAPI working.

Our current architecture is 2 x Aveva Plant SCADA 2023 servers running in redundancy, a third remote computer running as a client to access the primary and secondary.

We want a fourth computer to access Trend Data from the Plant SCADA servers using CTAPI.

My current understanding is for the fourth computer to connect remotely via CTAPI we need .net framework installed and the visual c++ redistributable’s (2017 x86 and x64). But what are the other requirements, I have been attempting to use https://github.com/estradege/citect but keep getting an error when trying to import the CTAPI .DLL’s.

I understand the requirement for the servers to have the the INI file to include [CtAPI]Remote = 1
but is there further setup required on the servers? Does PCS framework need to be installed? Does the System Management Controller need to be configured as well? If anyone has completed any CTAPI projects running on a remote computer and can point me in the right direction that will be extremely helpful. The ideal configuration is a remote application that can access and download trend files, but that is probably why the Aveva Historian was created, I want to do this myself to learn how to get these CTAPI functions running on a remote computer

Thanks in advanced!

Jason

  • Here's a page from the Plant SCADA help that explains the requirements:

    Extensibility > CtAPI (The link keeps getting deleted. Just search for that page in the product help.)

    There are some CTAPI tools and sample code in the Plant SCADA Toolbox under the Tag: CTAPI

    Note that some of these are quite old. However, I tested Citect Data Logger (CTAPI Logger) and Test CtAPI and they both appear to work with PlantSCADA 2023. To make it simple, I just put the EXE files in the PlantSCADA\Bin folder so I didn't need to worry about the DLL requirements.

    You also need a CTAPI license (AKA API licenses or Connectivity/OPC Server licenses) for each connection. You normally get CTAPI licenses with a full license. You can view licenses in the Studio | Licensing and in the Kernel | General window in the runtime.

  • Here is a check list

    • Plant SCADA 2023 is referencing .NET 6.0+ while Github's one is based on .NET Core 2.0. You should obtain a copy of CTAPI components from .\AVEVA Plant SCADA\Extras\CtApi on the release media of Plant SCADA 2023 (either 32bit or 64bit) for your CTAPI client on machine 4.
    • What mode of CtOpen is used by the CTAPI client? The sample in GitHub is using the default (unencrypted mode - legacy connection)
    • If your CTAPI server running in the encrypted mode, System Management Server needs to be installed and configured on your CTAPI client machine (not required for the legacy connection).
    • A client process used as CTAPI server should be running in service mode for encryption (not required for legacy connection)
    • A /x client is NOT supported as CTAPI server

    Hope this would help.

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