Inquiry About Embedding Content in AVEVA OMI

Dear all.

I am Schneider Taiwan Engineer.
I am currently working on a project using AVEVA OMI, and I would like to inquire about the possibility of embedding an .exe application directly into the OMI interface as an operational screen.
I'm currently aiming to integrate products from other Schneider departments into the OMI environment.
At present, I have been embedding applications using web-based methods, which works well. However, one of our clients has requested that we embed the actual executable application's interface directly into OMI. As a test, I attempted to embed the Windows Calculator as a sample .exe application, but unfortunately, it does not display properly within OMI.
As an alternative, I am currently attempting to implement embedding via Remote Desktop Web using Apache, which technically works. However, this approach ends up embedding the entire remote desktop session rather than just the specific application window, which is not ideal for our use case.
I would like to ask if there are any recommended resources, best practices, or case studies that could help us overcome this limitation. Specifically, we are looking for a way to embed only the application window (from an .exe) into OMI, rather than the whole desktop environment.
Any guidance or suggestions you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

  • Hi, 

    I would say that the standard approach if you want to embed a program into OMI is to create a Client Control, wrapping the program you want to display in a WPF control, a WebWidget, or even a .Net Client Control. There is also the OMI Toolkit available for creating your own 'applications' that can be hosted within an OMI application. 

    There are too many challenges if you were to 'embed' an .exe program in another program that I have not seen any other software supporting this at all. (at least not in a good and stable way).

    This is why we had ActiveX components in the past, and the above mentioned .Net client controls, and WPF and Web Widgets so on.
    The latter also targets to support OMI Web witch is not possible using legacy controls.

    I have seen some solutions where InTouch initiates the exe and it is built to be running on-top of an empty space on the screen in the application, but this quickly becomes unmanageable if you want to incorporate the program in your standard navigation model. 

    Your approach of embedding an Remote Desktop is one valid workaround, and I have seen some discussions here on the forum on embedding VNC or similar to be able to view external programs in OMI.

    The choice of technology depends on the program that you want to embed, if you have the source code for it and the dependencies of the embedded program.

  • Hi, further adding to Richard's comment, the best way to do this is via .NET Control. Web widget is a more front end and won't be able to embed .exe applications. You can use WPF to embed within OMI as an OMI App