dataPARC Connector

.NET AGENT

Item Type Support

SIGNALS

Overview

The dataPARC Connector allows Seeq to access data from the dataPARC PARCserver. This connector is a next-gen replacement for connections to the dataPARC OPC-UA server via Seeq’s OPC-UA Connector. It connects for the dataPARC PARCserver over gRPC which is significantly more efficient.

Prerequisites

The dataPARC connector is hosted by the .NET Agent and secures the communication between agent and historian with certificates. This connector is compatible with the DataPARC server releases 2405 and 2411.

Certificates

The dataPARC connector requires channels for communication which should be secured by certificates. The dataPARC connector supports four options for a source connection: System Trusted CA, Mutual TLS, Self-Signed and None (unsecured).

System Trusted CA

This option uses a certificate that has been verified by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). The certificate must be trusted on the local machine that is running the remote agent. The connection will work automatically using these certificates, as both the server and the device they're running on must trust the certificates.

Mutual TLS

Mutual TLS (Transport Layer Security) means that both the client application (the connector) and the server (the historian) verify each other. In addition to the server certificate, a client certificate is also required. The ClientCertificatePath should be provided along with an optional client certificate password if the client certificate is password-protected. For both Mutual TLS and self-signed certificates, the certificate path can be set in the configuration. If a certificate path is not set, the connector expects the certificate to have been installed and trusted on the local machine.

Self-Signed

This is only advisable for internal networks and should not be used outside protected intranets

For this option, the self-signed certificate from the server must be copied to the machine running the remote agent. The self-signed certificate from the server must either be trusted on the local machine running the remote agent or the certificate's location must then be set as the ServerCertificatePathin the configuration. The connector will attempt to read the certificate from this path.

None (Not Recommended)

This is not a recommended option under most circumstances

This option is for data sources or Dataparc servers that are configured to communicate without certificates. All communication would be in plain text and unencrypted. This should only be used within trusted internal networks.

Configuration

The following are the configuration options that are displayed in the Configuration modal that appears when you click Configure for an existing datasource or in the case of a datasource being created, in the Create new datasource connection modal that appears after clicking on the Add Datasource button on the Datasources administration page.

Property Name	Default Value	Data Type	Description
`HostName`	A help text that must be replaced	String	The hostname for the server hosting your dataPARC PARCserver gRPC API. It may be an IP address or something like `sub-domain.domain.tld`.
`Port`	`12340`	Integer	The port on which your dataPARC PARCserver gRPC API is configured to communicate.
`ServerProtocol`	`Https`	String	The protocol to be used to communicate with the dataPARC server. Valid values are: `Http` `Https`
`ServerAuthMode`	`SystemTrustedCACert`	String	The authentication protocol that should be used to authenticate the connector with the server. Valid values are: `SystemTrustedCACert` `MutualTLS` `SelfSignedServerCert` `None (Not Recommended)`
`ServerCertificatePath`	`null`	String	The certificate to be used in authenticating with the server. Optional for `SelfSignedServerCert` and `MutualTLS` authentication.
`ClientCertificatePath`	`null`	String	The client certificate to use for Mutual TLS authentication. Required when using `MutualTLS` authentication.
`ClientCertificatePassword`	`null`	String	The password for the client certificate used for Mutual TLS authentication (if certificate is password-protected)
`VerboseLogging`	`false`	Boolean	A flag that determines whether additional logging should occur. This flag should be set to `true` if you encounter any issues as it could allow for valuable troubleshooting information to be logged. However, the increased log volume could obscure issues or cause overly frequent log roll-off.
`HistorianQualityFilter`		A List of positive integers between 0 and 255	Values indicating Historian quality values to exclude from returned samples. Any tag data value with a quality in this list will be excluded.

Known Issues

There are no known issues for the dataPARC connector. Please report any issues you find to our support portal.

Troubleshooting

If you are running into issues with connecting to or access data from dataPARC, view our guide for troubleshooting datasource issues.

Performance considerations

The dataPARC connector does not have any special performance considerations. View optimizing datasource performance for general guidance.